If Belief Was Enough
by gekizetsu
Summary: Complete. Sequel to And Fools Shine On. Washington State is full of mysterious holes but so is Dean's understanding of himself...and poor Sam has to learn how to stitch a soul.
1. Chapter 1

This is my favorite Big Dumbass Local Urban Legend, twisted around for my own twisted purposes. No, I have not been out looking for the hole, even though I have been to Ellensburg a million times. If Dean and Sam were out there, yes, I would look for them...um, it. Sequel to _And Fools Shine On_. Supernatural is not mine; Mel's Hole is not mine; The 12th Man probably belongs to Texas A&M but no one cares. No idea how many chapters this'll turn out to be...sorry. They speak, I scribble. That's the deal.

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**If Belief Was Enough**  
(c)2006 b stearns 

-I-

"Inventory," Dean said.

"More like cleaning your damn trunk," Sam said. "It's like the clown car at the circus in here. Do you even know what half this stuff is?"

They were parked so far off the side of the motel's courtyard that no one would be able to see what was in the trunk without walking all the way up to them. In addition to keeping the weapons in good shape and the car in top form, Dean had decided they needed to make sure what the hell was in the trunk. The whole digging-around-in-a-panic while nearly being eaten thing was old. It wasn't like Dean didn't know right where everything was. Of course he did. Mostly. But Sam didn't, and the next time a skinwalker decided to dig in the trunk and whack Sam with a crowbar, Sam ought to know the crowbar was there.

"Yes," Dean said defensively. "See this?" He held up what looked like a doll about the size of his hand, made of burlap and wrapped in a bit of cloth. It seemed to have fur for hair.

"Aw, it's your binky," Sam said. "Or the source of all your mysterious _power_."

"It's a Wanga doll," Dean growled. "A jinx remover. And this thing here..." He held up a small box with a small white skull in it. The skull glittered.

Sam looked closer. "Is that made of _sugar_?"

"The ancestors of the Aztecs and certain tribes in Mexico -"

"Day of the Dead," Sam said. "Yeah, I know. I haven't forgotten everything. This really is overkill, though."

"Well, smartass, why do they keep collecting plants from the rainforest? And shark cartilage, and otter dicks or whatever. You never know which one will cure cancer, you gotta try everything." Dean tossed the Wanga doll back into the trunk and then wiped a hand on his jeans. No telling what he'd spilled on it. Mountain Dew, he hoped.

Sam laughed aloud in the early morning sunlight, his voice ringing back to them off the U-shape of the courtyard. "That's the lamest way I've ever heard someone try and explain OCD."

"Hey - it's what dad said. I didn't pull this out of my ass."

"Yeah? So your ass has limits. I never would have guessed." Sam smirked and walked away to get the coffee he'd left sitting on the nearby curb.

"Shut up, weasel boy," Dean said to his back, then reached up to the length of dark flannel that was velcroed into the underside of the trunk lid. The more fragile stuff was here, including an envelope with a bit of cardboard holding it stiff. He opened it and unfolded the carefully tucked sheet of paper, peering again at the scribble of handwriting on it and the bit of off-white feather that fell out into his hand. Not a bird's feather. Not any bird, ever, anywhere. Not according to the lab report that was also folded into the envelope. 'Undetermined organic origin'. Containing DNA, but with the strangest base pairs.

_Dean, there are angels in the world, too. Don't forget that._

He had no idea where it had come from, and it didn't really matter. He had always been afraid to ask his father about it, because it brought ideas to life he had neither time nor inclination to explore. Evil exists; kill it. The end. Knowing there was good of the same mettle or better sharing their space would only bring despair, because goddamnit, where the hell was it? Why wasn't it fighting beside them, why was it so hidden?

It didn't matter to him if it just wasn't showing itself in ways he could understand. Because damn if the evil shit wasn't just flying out of the woodwork and waving its hands at them daily. It loved showing itself. All the real and true good of the world was sleeping or had taken off for greener pastures. That? That he could understand. He couldn't even really blame it. No one believed in it anymore, not with the same fascination they gave the darkness.

If he ever saw an angel, he'd blast it with rock salt first, to be sure it was real. If that pissed it off, good. That's what it got for showing up so late. And he was mostly hellbound anyway by his own estimation. Fishing was probably good in the River Styx, so he'd be fine.

He tucked it away again and put the cloth back in place. The good of the world had spread itself out, that was all, instead of concentrating where it could be decimated. The good all hid in places like Sam's laughter in the middle of Nowhere, North Dakota.

"You know, we never did get around to actually figuring half this stuff out," Sam said, reappearing at his shoulder and holding out a fresh paper cup of coffee. "What difference does it really make? It's all just...symbols. And charms, and...what difference does it make, all the superstition?"

Dean understood what he meant. Why did it _work_? Sam was only ruminating; if he'd been serious then he wouldn't have looked so bemused or had only half his attention on the question. And no, when it was in their faces all the time, they hadn't wasted time talking about why things worked; only that they did. Books said, ancient manuscripts said, scrolls said, cave walls said. Lore passed down for thousands of years from parent to child said. "We didn't set the rules," Dean said. "They were set back when time began, for all I know. Maybe none of this stuff has any _real_ power. Not the same kind of power as guns or fire. But as long as the belief exists, that's enough. As long as the ugly things keep turning tail, that's all I care about."

"Really?" Sam said, and this time he did stop to look at Dean. "You've never thought about it?"

"Thinking about it's not the same as figuring it out," Dean said. "I like the hows and not the whys, Sam."

"Um...the whys kind of let you make better use of the hows, most of the time," Sam said. "Like you and dad figuring out how to make salt loads for the shotgun."

Dean made some indeterminate noise and dug around in the trunk some more. But, to his chagrin, Sam had turned his full attention to him.

"I never thought of you as someone who would just say belief was enough," Sam said.

"Words only have the power you assign them," Dean said. "It's like an agreement, or something."

"So maybe demons decided to flinch at the name of God in Latin?" Sam said. "They took a vote, in committee?"

"Don't be so literal," Dean said, meaning _dude I don't know, go away._ "I wasn't there."

Sam turned away so he could grin to himself over the fact that Dean didn't realize he was admitting to blind faith, in his way. Not bad for a guy who'd been awake for four days. Dean had yet to sleep since fully waking from the rigors of escaping the revenant that had dogged Sam in Dean's own shoes. Boots, actually.

"Look," Dean said without looking up, "I love science as much as the next geek, but I'm not gonna go trying to explain everything when all that wordiness just gets in the way. There it is. If I can't use it thirty seconds after finding out about it, I don't need it."

The world according to Dean Winchester.

Sam grinned and put his coffee down, and began carefully removing things from the trunk. "Okay, but you have to explain the dreamcatcher."

"Shut up," Dean said. "I don't."

-I-


	2. Chapter 2

For more information: melsholedotcom (since links are not allowed).

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**If Belief Was Enough - 2**  
(c)2006 b stearns 

**-I-**

_**/two days back**_

_Dad sent us coordinates three days ago. No point reminding you we could have been the coordinates, the way we've been acting._

Dean had not finished gathering himself back together yet, but he was doing fine at pretending. Sam had been careful to ignore what he couldn't avoid seeing and hearing - random bits of things Dean had no idea he was saying out loud, for one - and the rest he was keeping an eye on. Dean had been mostly sleight of hand most of his life to keep anyone from seeing what he held close to the vest, all flash and grins and illusion. Since West Virginia there was no vest, still, just cards everywhere. Fifty-two pickup, 24/7. He was still Dean, only moreso, and occasionally too much so.

At least he was only attracting the living, so far. People had always looked at Dean, especially when he was working every last bit of charm he'd been hardwired with. The last couple of days they'd been staring at him like they couldn't look away, or stepping away from him as fast as they could. Dean was filling entire rooms just by standing in them with his hands in his pockets. Dean had been too distracted to notice, and Sam hadn't brought it to his attention. Lately they were just living and lucky and not alone.

Sam wished Dean would get the lid back on before it was Sam that tipped far enough to spill over.

"Hey," Dean said, hunting and pecking along the keyboard. "I figured out where this is. It's eastern Washington."

"Please," Sam said from his perch on the wrought iron railing outside. Outside, where there was just enough room to breathe. Second floor, this time, door and windows open for once because Dean could tolerate it. "Please, please tell me it's not Bigfoot."

"No," Dean said in a tone that indicated Sam was an idiot. "Until Bigfoot starts molesting hikers, we leave him alone." He paused. "Actually, the hikers probably deserve a little cornholing. Poor Sasquatch, trying to make a living, and these little Powerbar-eating Microsofties come crawling all over his neighborhood. A Wendigo would be too good for these losers."

"What's the operating system on your laptop?" Sam said.

"What the hell's that got to do with the brand of condoms I use?" Dean said.

"It runs on Windows, you ass," Sam said. "So, yeah, keep making fun of the Microsofties."

"How do you spell 'douche'?" Dean said, still typing.

Sam ignored him.

"Maybe a day and a half," Dean muttered. "Take the 90 all the way into Ellensburg...yeah, that's it. Some place called Manastash Ridge. Eleven wayward hunters and hikers missing over the last three years. Damn near nothing in the papers about it, since they're too busy losing people on Mount Rainier. No trace of anybody - no buttons or shoelaces or gum wrappers or anything. This place is the freakin' Bermuda Triangle of the Northwest."

"You sure it's not just a serial killer?" Sam said. Just a serial killer, like it would be the least of their worries.

"Nah," Dean said. "Serials love to leave things around. Manifestos to the local paper, friendship bracelets made of toe bones, stuff like that. These folks are _gone_."

"Pagan-god type gone, or abducted by aliens gone?" Sam said. "You're not coming up with any local myths or you would've said something by now."

"The biggest buzz around Manastash Ridge is 'Mel's Hole'," Dean said. "Makes me feel dirty just saying it. Check this out - websites devoted to mysterious holes that could lead anywhere. Whole damn state's full of 'em. This one apparently hasn't been found yet, but everyone's sure it's out there."

"You think people are falling down a hole," Sam said flatly.

"Oh, not just any hole, Sam," Dean said with a suggestive grin. "A bottomless hole. Kind of like you at 14. You did nothing but eat for a year straight."

"If all these people were falling down a hole, the thing would be big enough to locate," Sam said. He was tilting his face back to check the sky for signs of a late spring storm.

"Not if it's the real thing," Dean said. He cocked an eyebrow and lowered his voice a notch. "Not if it's moving around and sucking people in."

Sam paused to lower his face and stare at Dean hard enough that Dean finally looked up. "Do you ever hear yourself?" Sam said, all tilted blue eyes and wind-blown angles framed in light.

Dean smiled, eyes and all. "You know you're the best thing that ever happened to me, right?"

Sam reeled for a moment under the lack of sarcasm. Dean was thinking aloud again without realizing it, and Sam was careful just to smile back as if Dean had not spoken, even if it felt like he'd been gut-punched. He was used to Dean being unpredictable, but not used to being _blindsided_. So he blinked until his eyes quit burning and coughed a little into one fist and went on. "Okay, so we have somewhere to stay while we're looking down every gopher hole in this place, right?"

Dean shook his head a little as if clearing it, falling serious. "Dude, what the hell. I already looked at all that. You can't find anything around there for under $70 a night."

"It's because of the amphitheatre nearby," Sam said. "I heard it's pretty cool. They built it right over the Columbia Gorge."

"Thanks, travel guide," Dean said. "It means they rip everybody off to hang out in some college-and-cow town. I'm not camping. I'm in _no mood_ for camping."

Sam shrugged. "We'll sleep in the car, then. I'll fold myself into thirds and try to find leg room, you know..."

_"All right all right!"_ Dean grouched.

--

_/present_

Ellensburg looked like everywhere else.

No surprise; people settled places and wove themselves into patterns that were convenient and familar, no matter where else they'd come from. Down bone deep the similarities outnumbered the differences, whether it was desert or rainforest. Washington state sported both: the Cascades to the west cut a figure in the world that offered eternal green and ocean beyond. Here though was farmland and dry air and sage, and places that most were used to passing through. The ones who stayed would weave themselves into the land and know it better than anyone, right down to the bones, right down to the secrets it kept and the toll it exacted for its occasional benevolence. The left hand gives and the right hand takes away.

New rule: they did not stop to stretch their legs after dark anymore. Driving all night was passe' anyway. They checked into the Comfort Inn on Canyon Road and headed out on foot in the gathering dusk, taking things in. The mid-spring warmth that had soaked into the ground during the day was radiating off the open lot they walked across, scrub brushing against their pantlegs. Low, familiar buildings faced the main drag, fast food or family diners, hotels and rentals and insurance. Moderate on the neon, heavy on the whitewashed concrete block. The setting and attitude said _we know you're passing through_. It missed the mark on small-town feeling, somehow, because it wasn't insular and didn't even attempt it.

Sam always shortens his stride to match Dean's lately and never realizes he's doing it.

"Hit it first thing?" Dean said in their halfassed and always-open conversation style, something they'd done right up until Sam had left at eighteen. It was a pattern they'd fallen into again suddenly, without marking its arrival, and had Sam stopped to think about it, he might have realized it was because Dean was just easier to understand the last few days. There had been days and days in their growing-up years where Dean had not been so closed down, when glances and small gestures had meant volumes, and Sam had spent the last six months staring and searching and not picking up enough to go by. It made them clumsy.

"Locals," Sam said absently, meaning _let's talk to the locals first. _Dean would be out poking at things in the dark if he could, convinced he would walk straight into whatever this was and dynamite it closed or something. Sam was hoping Dean would walk around with him awhile and map things out, and make plans for the next morning, and then sleep eventually, because Sam was unable to tune out the all-Dean, all the time station yet. Dean is busy when sitting still these days, broadcasting some kind of open frequency to Sam, playing the same song over and over that meant _deanwinchester_ and more without words. He was prime numbers played across light-millennia like the signal from _Contact_, the movie that Sam remembered made Jess cry every time she'd seen it.

Humans were made as packages, and made to stay that way, and not wander around with their souls loose and acetylene-torching whatever passed by. Dean was leaving marks and trails in his wake and smearing the air with his very own signature, signing his name to every breath and step. It was never really visible or audible, and didn't need to be. Sam breathed it like oxygen even as he wished the tatters of whatever had served to package his brother would seal up again. Sam was wearing thin with the watching and listening but knew the silence was going to be harder to bear when it came again.

"Some sort of landbound Einstein-Rosen bridge," Sam said aloud.

"It's not a white hole, Sam," Dean said.

They're on the same wavelength. Dean matches his stride to Sam's without realizing it.

**-I-**


	3. Chapter 3

Many, many thanks for the reviews. And in one case, a kickass suggestion.

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**If Belief Was Enough**   
(c)2006 b stearns

-I-

Sam slept hard despite the fact that Dean was in and out of the room all night. It was probably _because_ he was occasionally out of 'range' that Sam was able to sleep. Dean had caught on to the fact that he was driving Sam nuts but not exactly why, and it wasn't troubling him that he'd been awake so long, so he wandered a little. Not far. He'd checked the local yellow pages online and figured a few of the older businesses would be most likely to know anything. It didn't hurt to scope things out on foot ahead of time - the place wasn't that big. Plus, Sam could actually rest.

All this weird energy had to go somewhere. Might as well make use of it.

There was still quite a bit of traffic at one in the morning. He jaywalked at will and listened to what he could catch of music from bars that were still an hour from closing. He looked in shop windows and hummed absently to himself, trying to remember which street that one mechanic from the yellow pages was on when he realized that there were other people on the sidewalk with him, but not passing him.

He turned from the window of some sort of import shop - honestly, who buys dishes with rooster patterns on them? - to find a trio of girls staring at him openly. That was nothing new, so he grinned at them. They weren't half bad, and they were even following what he referred to as the Charlie's Angels rule - if three girls are friends, then one is blonde, one is brunette and one is a redhead. Chicks grouped themselves this way all the time, and he'd never been able to figure out whether it was on purpose, or what he and Sam had agreed was a _cosmological constant. _Only one was really staring at him with unblinking awe; the other two were looking him up and down appraisingly but trying to get Miss Yellow Mini Skirt to fall back into formation.

It set off one of those internal alarms he'd never bothered to name but always heeded. In this case it was the one that said not now, wrong time, wrong place. Three girls, sober or not, could be fun under the right circumstances but not the way the one was staring at him. That was the other alarm; the Not Right alarm, the one that he never questioned no matter what. He watched them go with the same grin still on his face, wondering what the hell that was about, and then headed the opposite way. There was a family restaurant at the end of the block, and if he remembered correctly he could hang a left there at the alley and the mom-and-pop body shop was at the end of that street. He'd take Sam there in the morning and they'd start canvassing from that spot. He knew from experience and dad's tales that a town's mechanics knew more than any of the old dogs sitting around the coffee shops. He could case the place a little now and get a sense of things, no big deal, then back to check on Sam, and -

Whoever grabbed the back of his jacket was already pissed at him, and that was all he really needed to know. He twisted out from under it, spinning to find some guy he didn't recognize staring at him bleary-eyed. "You gotta keep it down."

"Hey," Dean said, keeping his eyes on the guy's hands. If it was a mugging, he was ready for it, but his only warning of a weapon would come by watching the hands. "Take it easy."

The guy was just a little shorter than he was, unshaven and looking like he'd been between doses of lithium for awhile. Not homeless, but not possessed of all his faculties at the moment either. Something was a little manic and off kilter in his body language. His eyes were in shadow but Dean caught the gist of things anyway by the hint of alcohol that carried to him.

"Keep it _down_," the guy said again, and Dean was so confused by the pleading tone of it that he didn't step out of the way when the guy leaned forward and tried to shove him.

The contact happened but never went any further. The shadow that fell across them both moved too fast.

All the guy had really done was place a hand flat on the front of Dean's left shoulder, but it was aggression all the same, or at the very least violating Dean's Personal Space Rule. Sam just didn't care what really sparked it or whether the guy could help it because Dean was accidentally screaming for attention on a subconscious wavelength. He didn't care if Dean could or would or wanted to handle it himself. Sam was bigger than anyone else involved and he was hyper aware of that and how tired he was. This once he wanted the chance to exact some sort of retribution for the last several weeks, warranted or not.

It was so simple; the guy never saw him coming. That calm, shiny-sweet puppy dog gaze crashed to a wolf's merciless snarl, all bared teeth and flaring nostrils. He put one hand around the guy's throat and whipped him around until his back slammed against the brick veneer of the building. He didn't really intend to apply as much pressure as he did, because the guy was turning purple almost immediately and his fingers were scrabbling at Sam's hand in desperation rather than trying to lash out. He wasn't even kicking, or trying to choke a word out.

Sam had all the air he needed but he was suffocating more than the guy whose feet he nearly had clear of the sidewalk.

"Touch him again," Sam said between his teeth, "...and I'll touch back a lot harder."

Dean clapped him sharply on the back and left his hand between Sam's shoulderblades, taking a handful of shirt while he was at it. He didn't tug; he didn't need to. "Great," he said. "Now that we've got that cleared up, we're late. You know. For a thing."

Sam snapped his hand back as if he'd been burned, because the circuit closed again and cleared his head of anything else. The guy took a long, hoarse gasp as he stumbled forward from the wall. Dean released Sam and thumped him on the back with one side of a closed fist, and Sam turned on his heel and walked quickly away. They left the guy coughing behind them, and he didn't even try and get another word in.

Dean found himself trotting a little to keep up with Sam's long, determined stride. If they were lucky or just fast enough, there wouldn't be cops added to this slow-chase-without-a-white-Bronco. They took a corner by the family restaurant and Dean stuck a foot out and nailed Sam in one shin, nearly tripping the stormcloud on stilts his brother had become. "Sooo, Sam," he said, "How you doing?"

Sam turned on him and grabbed him without the force he'd used moments earlier but still a lot more than he meant to. The contact meant an end to the headache because instead of staring into the sun he could channel it and eclipse it if he had to.

It was the silence that had brought Sam awake. The white noise with occasional spikes of _hey look at this! _had quit playing in his head, and just as he feared, the silence was louder and more awful than not hearing the signal meaning his brother was nearby and running at full capacity.

Sam had been making coal into diamonds and back in his chest for the last couple of weeks. Sooner or later everything comes due, and Sam's been coming due since at least 11/2/05.

Stress is cumulative.

"That was really un-Sam of you," Dean said in his most congenial tone, the one he used when humoring someone he was thinking of hitting. Sam was a shadow haloed by sodium vapor streetlights, a stalking menace he wasn't used to seeing.

"Imagine that," Sam said, his hands on Dean's shoulders and up to his elbows in Dean's soul. It was way too much but the least he needed. "See, you don't really remember much of it, but for a week something wearing you was fucking around with me and I never had any idea where _you_ were. So I don't really care if you're bored or whatever this is, it would be great to wake up and not have to come looking for you."

"Hey," Dean said, "It's not like you're exactly ecstatic to have me around, suddenly, so I don't know what the hell you're whining about. We could use some space anyway." He couldn't have shaken Sam off if he wanted to; and by the grip Sam had on him, he realized he probably shouldn't.

Sam left one hand on Dean's shoulder and gestured with the other like he was hoping words and patience would drop out of the air. "People who don't have the 'shining' are backing away from you lately, you ass. You get completely oblivious to everything but what you're looking for sometimes, when you're on a hunt, and you can't do that right now. I don't even know if you're stuck this way."

Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam. "What the - "

"You told me not to touch you," Sam said.

Something clicked into place, about how the thing got in. _It wanted you so bad, it would have done anything to get you, so I thought if I couldn't kill it myself I could slow it down for awhile by giving myself -_ He had no idea he was saying it aloud, and he paused because Sam dropped the hand from his shoulder to pat him on the chest.

"Yeah," Sam said. "I know." Dean stared back at him for a moment as if suspicious that Sam was reading his mind, and Sam wavered under the wide open, backlit green of his regard. "Can we go back to the room before the cops come?"

"That guy's not gonna call the cops," Dean said. "You gonna give me some real idea of what the hell's going on?"

"I don't know if I can," Sam said, finally dropping his hand. There it went: Dean's greatest hits, picking up right where they'd left off in his head. At least he was still in the sun's corona.

-I-

Mostly, Dean stared at his hands. It was good that he was listening but bad that he had nothing to say.

They sat across from each other on the beds, mirror images again, elbows braced uneasily on knees and hands loosely clasped between. It never occurred to them that it was a defensive posture. It was just how they did things, when talking had to be done.

Sam kept his hands still for once while talking, something he only did when he had no understanding of the subject. "You were trying to save me, and I tried to save you back, and whatever you did to try and take yourself over again kind of spilled over. I think. You told me it had you kind of locked up in there, and when you busted out I think you maybe also busted whatever it is that keeps us in at all."

Dean raised an eyebrow at that, but still didn't look up. He wasn't fidgeting, something he only did when he was really listening.

"It makes sense that everyone's gonna react differently to it," Sam said. "Some people just see or feel things different than everyone else, so maybe they're startled or attracted or scared, and don't know why. Maybe that one guy took it like a challenge."

"You could have said something," Dean said, low and gruff.

"Like what? 'Hey Dean, your soul is showing, zip it up'? Give me a break. Like you would have listened to a word. It always takes something happening before you'll listen." Sam paused. "I don't know any more about it than you do."

Dean was silent for a moment, and when Sam looked at him to try and guess what was coming, he didn't expect the flash of panic that vanished as quickly as it came. There was a frown instead and a twisting of the mouth that Sam recognized as...embarassment. He could only stare.

"Sam," Dean said, keeping his eyes down, "Can people..._see_ me?"

Sam knew what he meant. Dean would rather stand buck naked in front of a crowd before he'd let anyone see his heart. Aside from the Impala it was the only thing _he_ believed he had that truly belonged to him.

"You're not..." Sam paused, because he just didn't have words this time. "I can only tell you what I see, and it's not really seeing. It's mostly that I can hear you, so it's probably different for other people. I can't hear what you're thinking, or anything like that, so I don't think anyone else can either. It's just that you..." Sam sighed. That headache was going to kill him, he figured he should be bleeding from somewhere if it was going to be this annoying. Dean was staring at him and waiting for once, which told Sam even more. "Look, it's sort of that you're harder to ignore than normal. People either love or hate you right away anyway, that's never gonna change, and for now it's just amplified. You're just...more _you_."

"So how's it hitting you?" Dean said. This time he glanced up at Sam from underneath his lashes.

Sam opened his mouth to answer and found himself hesitating. _Between the eyes._ It didn't matter what he said; Dean wouldn't be happy. This was so _personal _that there was no way it wouldn't become a 'sharing and caring' moment, and even if it was Dean initiating it for once, Sam balked.

"Sam."

"You're just more you," Sam repeated, because it was the best he could do.

"I'm driving you fuckin' crazy, then," Dean said. His tone was flat, just a statement with no emotion attached, and Sam cringed. "You've been different, since."

"Dean - "

"I don't know what I did," Dean said quickly. "I don't know if that thing did it to me, or if I just -"

"It wasn't done to you," Sam said. "I don't know how I know, but it's not like it's an injury or anything. You're loose. That's all. You're not hurting anything."

Dean thought, suddenly, about what had happened earlier. _Keep it down._ Now he got it. "I'm hurting you," he said. "I can tell. So how do we shut me off, exactly?"

Sam started to say something, then ended up just shaking his head. He ran his hands through his hair but left his hands on his head, looking worried. "It was connecting us that killed it," he said. "It caused some kind of bridge, trying to get us both, and the combination of me and you did it in somehow. You're not _broken._ I see what happened and I can kind of get an idea of where your edges are, because we were bridged for a moment, but I don't know if there's a way to put you back."

"Then what do I do, hide?" Dean said. "Go all Boo Radley? We gotta find a house with stairs, then."

"Dean," Sam said softly. "You don't shut a soul _off_. I would never shut you off even if I could."

Dean stared at Sam long enough to pick up his hallmark combination of sad determination. Damn, but they got themselves into trouble sometimes. Sure, they went looking for it, but even then the law of averages had to cut them some slack occasionally. He'd just ride this out the way he did everything else, and whatever it was it would probably take care of itself anyway. Or Sam would come up with something like he usually did. Either way, no sense worrying about what you had no control over.

He leaned forward and held a hand out across the space to Sam as if they were meeting for the first time after a long absence. Sam cocked his head back in confusion and shot Dean a sidelong glance. "Come on," Dean said.

Sam snorted in amusement, not knowing what Dean was really up to but playing along anyway. He slapped his hand into Dean's, and they gripped hands solidly. Sam closed his eyes in relief before he could stop himself.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Dean said. "I told you not to touch me, and now that's all you've got left."

"It's not like that," Sam said, holding on. "It's just, you know, like a river cresting its banks. The only time I'm out of the floodplain is when the bridge is back in place."

"I'm not holding hands with you everywhere we go."

Sam opened his eyes and aimed a halfhearted slap at Dean and missed when Dean rolled away.

"Get some sleep," Dean said, standing. "I know who we can start with, in the morning, and if we're lucky, we won't need much else. You can probably figure out where this hole is."

"If it exists," Sam said, flopping back on his bed.

"It does, Grasshopper," Dean said as he stripped his shirt over his head. "Believe it. We've probably already got enough from the stuff on the 'net to triangulate the most likely spot, when we compare it to the areas folks went missing in."

"And what are we gonna do, exactly, if we find it?" Sam said, eyes on the ceiling.

"Find a virgin and throw her in," Dean said. "Christ, I don't know, Sam. Don't think so much. Go to sleep."

"What are you doing, then?" Sam said. "You have to sleep eventually."

"Don't worry," Dean said. "My turn to think."

"God help us." Sam closed his eyes and was out almost immediately, even though he'd been sure he wouldn't be able to sleep.

Dean poked around a bit more online, dragging a chair over between the beds. Whenever Sam stirred, Dean reached over and laid a hand on his arm until he was still again.

He didn't really care how anyone else handled it. It was Sam who was paying the price every day because Dean had been too slow in either kicking the revenant out or pitching himself off the overpass.

_You gotta keep it down._

Like he wasn't enough of a freak already.

_Sorry, Sam._

-I-


	4. Chapter 4

Thanks again to everyone who's reviewed or even just taken a glance. You rock.

* * *

**If Belief Was Enough - 4**   
(c)2006 b stearns

-I-

Sam was rudely awakened. Not for the first time, obviously, but nightmares were usually the culprit. This time something descended on him physically, crashing into his bed in the real world and squishing his ribcage. 170 pounds of older brother was holding him down.

"Good morning, sunshine," Dean said.

Sam squinted against the early morning light long enough to see it was 7am by the bedside clock. He screwed his face up and closed his eyes again. "Okay. You've gotta be kidding me."

"It's another wicked fabulous day in this swiss-cheese state, and we're on top of this entire thing," Dean said. "This is as good as solved."

"You're actually on top of _me_," Sam said without opening his eyes. "Doing that five-year-old on Saturday morning thing."

"Paybacks are a bitch," Dean said. "I can remember plenty of mornings when Sam the Bugbear wanted someone to watch cartoons with."

"I'll do anything you want if you never, never call me Bugbear again," Sam said.

"Then never leave me," Dean said.

Sam's eyes snapped open and he twisted to look at Dean. As he thought, Dean had no idea that he'd said it aloud.

"Anything?" Dean said with a smirk.

Sam's brain was scrambled with the unintentional honesty, so he shook his head a little. "Um...within reason."

"Welcher," Dean said and slapped him in the side of the head. "Get up."

"Go get me some coffee, then," Sam said, knowing he was asking for it. "Get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie."

"Oh, _dumb_ass," Dean growled, and jammed his fingers into Sam's ribs. Predictably, they ended up on the floor but managed not to hit the nightstand or break anything for once. Sam won by putting a knee in Dean's back, shoving his face into the motel carpet, and describing what he believed to be _in_ the carpet.

"Don't you fuckin' quote South Park at me," Dean said, voice strained with trying to keep his face clear of the floor. "...without doing the voices too."

"Mmmkay," Sam said.

Dean laughed, like Sam hadn't heard him do in years. _Laughed. _Not the 'you're all idiots' laugh he'd developed over the years, not the polite social reaction when he wanted to get on someone's good side. Just full-throated laughter, for its own sake.

Goddamn, how often did they just _play? _The things that had become commonplace for them would have sent most screaming. There was nowhere to run, so they ran toward whatever the rest of the world couldn't hide from. Immersion in the horrors that ran just beneath the average radar probably earned them a jaded attitude, but there still had to be this, just moments of loving the little blessings that came along when they weren't looking. Things that reminded them what the war they waged was for.

Sam stood and jumped out of range before Dean could grab an ankle. "Get up," he echoed. "Daylight's burning."

Dean sat up and brushed himself off. "Dude, I could actually catch something off this floor."

"A little extra protein in your diet never hurt," Sam said.

-I-

After a bit of coffee and a go at pancakes at the family restaurant down the block, they made a beeline for the body shop Dean had his heart set on. They set out on foot, a couple of guys with casual strides and the still-rising sun striking auburn highlights out of their hair, scuffing ancient desert-dust under their feet and reflecting the sky in their eyes. They were only hard to notice when they wanted to be, and that day Dean wanted to be invisible. Sometime during the night he'd given up on blending in, but that was the only thing he'd given up on.

Sam was slouching a little, but even his shadow took the work out of the courage for Dean.

It was small for a body shop, long and low, but seemed to be the place to go in that area; the double auto bay was occupied. The spaces out front were taken with a wide variety of makes and models. It was going to be warm, even for mid May, and the sun reflected off everything, digging facets out of the plainest surface. Sitting between a shoe store and a farm supply outlet, the older brick structure looked crouched and weary.

There was an older man in gray coveralls wiping his hands on an oil-stained rag just outside the open door of the payment office, watching them approach as if he'd been waiting. It didn't cause Sam any trepidation; he got the impression that the guy spent a lot of time out there taking stock of things. They walked straight up to him, and Dean wished him a good morning and offered a hand.

The man nodded at him. "Military?" he said.

"Military family," Dean said, not elaborating and not surprised that something in his bearing carried his father's lessons forward.

"Lewis Craker," the man said, offering a hand to Sam. "You boys walking in from a breakdown?"

"No sir," Dean said. "Passing through looking for some history, heard you'd been here the longest." They had agreed ahead of time there was no point working up a front story this time. But Dean was free to riff on the details if he wanted to.

Craker looked at them for a moment, still taking stock. Then he gestured toward the bays. "Most of 'em break down on the 90," he said. "Always on their way over the passes, skiing, whatever. Concert season just started, I get all these kids over here with their Hondas telling me how great Ozzfest is. That's fine, but I won't let 'em pick their cars up if they've been drinking."

"Good move," Sam said. "See a lot of people come through?"

Craker tilted his head back to look appraisingly at Sam. "And a few who don't," he said.

Sam did everything he could not to turn his head and look at Dean. He nodded instead and said, "It's the ones who don't that stick in your mind."

Craker nodded. "I figured you guys were up to something. You missing somebody?"

"Our parents for starters," Dean mumbled as if to himself, but far too audible. "Sam misses Jessica, you know, because I really wasn't fast enough, and pretty much anybody we love dies or vanishes. One of these days I'm gonna fuck up and be missing Sam, too."

Sam felt his own face go slack with shock, and he nearly stiff-armed Dean in an attempt to shut him up. Before Dean could turn on him and start yelling, he dragged him to one side. Dean jerked his arm out of Sam's grip, brow furrowed in annoyance and affront. When he opened his mouth, Sam said, "You're doing it again."

_"What?"_

"Look, I can tell you're freaking him out," Sam said, unsure why he just couldn't break it to Dean that he kept thinking aloud. Part of him wanted to, because every time it happened it was harder to hear, but if he had to be honest he just wasn't ready to stop listening. He'd deal with the twinge of guilt over it later. "Let me do the interviewing for a minute, soften the guy up, and then I'm sure we'll have all kinds of details to mess with. Okay?"

Dean was still looking at Sam like he wanted to kill him, and it was a revelation. Sam could not figure out how someone's thoughts could so completely negate their behavior, or how the hell Dean didn't hear himself. "It's just...think of how that guy looked at you last night," Sam said. "Maybe I'm just being paranoid."

Dean dropped his shoulders with a sigh. "You worry way too much, Sam. I'm pretty sure I can take _this_ guy if he decides to smack me around. You're acting really fuckin' weird, and if anybody's freaking him out, it's you."

Sam shrugged. "Just give me a minute to make sure nobody's gonna have a problem with you." That much was the truth.

Dean shook his head and tossed a wave at Craker, who was watching them with a bemused interest. "I'll check out the keychains," he said. "They got a shitload of keychains in there."

Sam walked back to Craker, smiling.

"He touched in the head?"

"Yeah," Sam said, trying not to let the smile become an ironic grin. "Just a little. Totally harmless, though."

"Brothers?"

"Yeah," Sam said again. "We don't want to waste your time or anything, we're just curious about an urban legend. Figured since we're already out this way, it wouldn't hurt to check it out."

"We've got a few," Craker said. "If you're lookin' for Bigfoot, you're a little far northeast."

"No," Sam said, and this time he did grin. "There's, uh...well, I feel kind of dumb asking. Some of my college friends were talking about how there's supposed to be a hole with no bottom."

"Ah," Craker said with a laugh. "Mel's Hole. There was a group over here about five years ago looking for it, never heard if they found it or not. Guess not." Something passed over his eyes that Sam only saw because he was watching for it. Craker had already made remarks that told Sam he knew a few things, but why he was making remarks to them didn't matter except that it might mean he was really hoping to tell someone what he'd seen. People were the same in that regard - just wanting someone to listen.

Sam blinked at him and waited. People also liked to fill silence, and Sam had learned that his height did not stop people from wanting to confess or ramble or hypothesize to him. _Puppy dog eyes, _Dean's voice heckled in his memory. _I bet you could make the Pope admit he wears Spongebob boxers._

"Strange, all that," Craker said.

"Anybody go missing, from that group?" Sam said. "It sounds like some people come through and don't make it past this point. That's part of the story I heard, anyway."

Craker shrugged. "Just like anywhere else in the world," he said. "But that thing with the Northrup boys a few months ago, they were local. That whole thing was odd."

Sam cocked his head a little and drew his brows together, the picture of concerned patience.

"Nothing but talk," Craker said, gazing off toward where two of his employees were talking to a customer. "Knew those boys, though."

"That's gotta count for something," Sam said.

"Hmm," Craker said. "Jack and Terry Northrup went hunting and Jack didn't come back. Papers said maybe he'd gone off somewhere, but I don't think he left his family like that. Terry said he was taken, and he was never what I'd call flighty. Knew him all his life, knew his dad from way back. No troubles with that family. There was the one bit with the port-o-potty on the church roof, but that's kid stuff and anybody could have been involved there. What I mean to say is he wasn't the type to panic or go running. Strange that things turned out the way they did. Could put a lot of it down to the way his brother disappeared."

Sam felt a dull _thud_ of dread somewhere in his solar plexus. Dean came up behind him, dangling an 8-ball keychain from one finger. They shared a glance.

"Did he ever tell you what happened?" Dean said softly.

"That's just it," Craker said. "Told everybody he could, and it was the same over and over. He never changed his story. Seems to me with everywhere I've been, people change the details as their memory fades, or when they're crazy or not sure about things. He was very particular about what happened."

"Where is he now?" Sam said, dreading the answer.

"Oh, he left town weeks ago," Craker said, wiping his hands on the rag again as if trying to discard some memory. "Couldn't take it anymore. He looked and looked out there for his brother, by himself and with friends and family. He pinpointed the spot. More than once. Hell, I was out there too. There was the remains of their campfire, and he swore right up and down where that hole was when his brother went in."

"That's what he said happened?" Dean said. "His brother fell in...or was pulled in?"

"That's the thing," Craker said, lowering his voice. The nearby traffic seemed to fade further into the distance. "He said it wasn't there in the daylight, and it should have been close enough and big enough to see. No way they could have missed it, he said. Maybe the size of one 'o them kiddie pools, I guess. They were sitting by the fire, getting ready to turn in, maybe there was a beer or two but like I said earlier, no trouble with those boys. Terry said he heard voices come out of that thing - right outta the depth of it somewhere, like from a long way away. He said Jack tore out into the dark calling his wife's name, said he was yelling that she was in there. He went right on in before Terry could do anything. He tried to get closer, threw a rope down after him, then had to give up. Said his cell phone quit, and when he couldn't take the noises anymore he ran out on foot. Car wouldn't start either."

Taking advantage of the pause for breath, Sam said, "What did Terry hear?"

Craker shook his head, eyes crinkling. "Boy said he could hear screaming, wailing, like people do when they've gone crazy. Like the tortured souls of hell," he said. "Like that hole opened straight down to the hell we were all raised to believe in."

_Raised to believe in,_ Sam thought. _Like we get what we think should be there._

Dean nodded a little and said, "But what do _you_ think happened?"

Craker pursed his mouth a little. "I'm a God-fearing man," he said. "I don't know what happened to those boys, or anyone else, and I can't say as I know there's a hole at all. If it was hell that came for those boys, it wasn't the one you get for shunning God. Those were good boys."

This time Sam did look at Dean.

-I-


	5. Chapter 5

**If Belief Was Enough - 5**  
(c)2006 b stearns

(Fellow WA residents: I played fast and loose with the topography of the whole Kittitas Valley. Sorry. Would also play fast and loose with Dean's topography if given the chance. Not sorry.)

* * *

-I- 

They didn't walk straight back to the hotel, although they realized they needed to check out and load the car. It was all going to be a matter of searching from then on, and it had to be on foot. The Northrups were home; two minutes on the phone pretending to be a local reporter with Mr. Northrup confirmed that Terry had left town and had not let his family know where he was headed. Panic had driven him somewhere away from everything he'd known.

"Our only witness is AWOL," Sam said as they walked between buildings and into a vacant lot, keeping clear of people.

"Our only _living_ witness," Dean said, gaze sweeping back and forth, squinting into the white-blue morning, always looking for something. "Nobody else got away."

"And whatever it was, it disappeared after it took the brother," Sam said. "Or so we have to assume, since they went back to look and didn't find anything. So, what've we got? A hole moving around and sucking people in?"

Dean reached over and punched Sam in the arm. "'Do you ever hear yourself?'" he said in a mock falsetto. "I told you. It's always weirder than it seems. Reasonable explanations need not apply."

"Okay, fine," Sam said. "But this is a phenomenon. And not necessarily a sentient phenomenon. We don't really have a precedent for this."

"We'll just have to look at it first," Dean said.

Sam stopped him with a hand flat against his chest. The sun beat down on them for a moment, and Sam realized the wind never seemed to stop blowing there; or it hadn't since they'd arrived, one way or another. Dean blinked at him expectantly, finally holding his hands out in front of him as a means of interrogation, gesturing Sam along but not shrugging him off like he usually would have.

"Even without the 'sucking people in' part, we have no idea where it is," Sam said.

"So find it," Dean said in a gruff undertone.

"People've been out looking for it for years, if you haven't noticed," Sam said.

"Not _us_," Dean said. "What are you, scared?"

Sam dropped his hand and wrinkled his nose in annoyance. "The sucking part, Dean. We kind of have to account for that. People who find this rabbit hole aren't showing up in China."

"Other people aren't us," Dean said. "We can't do anything else until we figure out where it _emanates_ from. You like that? _Emanates_? You wanna look it up?"

Sam tried hard to be disgusted or at least pretend he was, but he compromised by turning away and grimacing until the urge to laugh left him. "Speaking of sucking," he said, refusing to look at Dean. When Dean didn't retort or kick dirt on him, he said, "You wanna go camping, then? I thought you weren't in the mood."

"That was then," Dean said. "We'll just hang out around the last known spot and see what happens. We attract all kinds of stuff. It'll probably come right to us. Everything else does."

"And in the absence of any other plan...we can just tie ourselves to trees," Sam said. "Because, remember? The last guy went _willingly_."

"Maybe it warped his brain," Dean said. "We're already kind of warped, so we're good." He paused. "Not everybody goes willingly. Gotta wonder why the Northrups heard different things."

"You've gotta ask yourself what the hell we're doing here," Sam said, turning back to Dean. "Eleven people missing in three years while hiking or whatever isn't spectacular. We've got one - _one_ - who claims to have seen and heard something weird, and even that's just second hand."

"Dad sent us out here for a reason," Dean said.

"If it was dad," Sam said.

Dean pointed a warning finger at him. "Don't start that. Don't. You don't have faith in _anything_."

"I have faith in you," Sam said, and Dean dropped his hands again and looked away, face set, jaw muscles briefly visible. "Even if you aren't totally back together yet. It seemed like a good idea to just go back to doing what we do, hit the road and look for something to beat the hell out of, rather than sit and wait. Out here in the middle of nowhere seemed like a good place to do it, because we're not running into that many people and it's always a good idea to keep you away from people."

Dean rolled his eyes and turned slightly away from Sam, hands on hips, gazing out across the expanse of lot that was already beginning to shimmer a little from heat.

"This is a wild goose chase," Sam said. "There are way too many natural explanations this time. One hysterical guy - "

"Who lost his brother," Dean said.

Sam snapped his mouth closed so fast he could hear his own jaw click.

Dean looked at him. "What," he said. "One hysterical guy what."

Sam sighed. Now he got it. Dean had summed the whole thing up in one easy phrase and had no idea he'd said it aloud. "Never mind," he said. "I'm not trying to be a killjoy. But how many nights do you wanna spend in the woods? Miles and miles of woods?"

"Whatever it takes," Dean said. "You trangulate an area and we check it out. We'll be lucky."

"Luck like ours doesn't go on forever, Dean," Sam said suddenly.

"Luck like ours probably quit already," Dean said without the bite to the words Sam had expected. "Skill works fine too."

--

Craker had been nice enough to sketch a basic map even though it had come with warnings, in a grave tone, about _critters_ and _old wells_ and some sort of grandfatherly comment about 'getting turned around out there and going missing.'

Dean stole the pillows from the motel ("Dammit, it's only stealing when it's something of value and it hurts the victim in some way. For what they charge a night? I'm the victim. The pillows are mine.") and Sam didn't bother trying to dissuade him.

Sam poked at the maps again and could recite the area's history for anyone by then. Cle Elum and Roslyn were big railroad and mining towns in the past; coal and gold. Even Ellensburg had its mines. But nothing near Manastash. Lots of rolling farmland had been carved out of a landscape that wanted to revert to scrub desert if it could. The ridge was all mountainous trails, good for offroading. There was a good chance that even if they accidentally trespassed, no one would know, in all that space. There were few chances of finding themselves at the business end of a shotgun. For once.

He'd double checked the newspaper stories for missing hikers or hunters and realized only eight of the eleven missing over the previous three years had notified anyone of where they were going. All eight had been headed for or had spent time in one particular area. Tripod Flats.

Sam read aloud to Dean from the USGS site. _Near Manastash Ridge the rocks of the Northwest Cascade System are truncated by a northwest-trending zone of high-angle faults that bound slivers of metavolcanic and metaplutonic rocks, as well as metasedimentary rocks and -_

"_Sam_," Dean said. "Rocks for jocks is closed."

"Hey, vulcanism is a possibility," Sam said. "There's also a bistatic passive radar system that uses commercial FM broadcasts as a signal source, used to track aircraft and meteors. Could be causing interference of some kind. Maybe hallucinations."

"If it's something more than a radar system," Dean said. "Nice area for secret government projects. Too bad we don't care."

Highway 410 and then 4W866 brought them to the foot of the basic trail area where the Northrups had last camped; it would take hiking to get the rest of the way up there. Dean parked off the road on a seldom used turnaround and made sure to back far enough into the underbrush to make the Impala hard to see. He muttered about bears possibly touching his car and about hiking and then about forgetting M&Ms. Sam was busy looking up into the stands of larch and cedar that crowded the inclines of basalt and wasn't listening.

"How far up?" Dean said.

"About an hour," Sam said. They shouldered their packs, and didn't say much else heading up the trail. There was no need to.

-I-

They found the site easily enough; two and a half miles up was a huge meadow, the trail's namesake. Off to the east another half mile, back under the canopy of old growth forest, the remnants of a campfire pit were still legible in the soil even if the stone circle containing it had been scattered. Many others had probably used it since, but it was still a notable marker on the map Craker had drawn.

Dean drew symbols of both protection and attraction that Sam remembered but didn't have the details for. He took care in choosing the stick he drew with, bemoaning the lack of rowan or willow or anything similar in the area, complaining that he had a rowan walking stick in the trunk of the car but hadn't thought to bring it. Sam listened and didn't respond, knowing he wasn't supposed to. Oak would do. Oak for truth, Dean said, and Sam automatically finished in his own head with _if there's a question in your heart the oak will answer it. _He didn't remember where that came from either, except that he was once good with trees and their legends. Some things stick forever, like the multiplication tables. Sam apologized to the tree Dean took the branch from, knowing that if Dean had remembered to do so he would have said it aloud, as open as he was.

Sam drew the same symbols on the natural circle of old growth cedar around the site, using charcoal dug from the fire pit.

Dean hypothesized about the fact that the ridge itself didn't have sage growing everywhere, while the canyon area did; the natural protection that sage affords wasn't extending to the ridge. Finally, he stared at Sam until Sam looked up. "Are you listening?"

"Always," Sam said, without sarcasm.

"You picking up any weird vibes?" Dean said.

"None weirder than yours," Sam said. Dean pitched his stick at Sam, missing by yards.

They walked the area, always keeping the site to their left, watching the sun and marking the trees. The trail they had initially followed had run out just south of there, and there was nothing other than deer runs around them showing the recent passage of anything physical. It would be easy to get _turned around. _Sam's sense of direction rivaled Dean's, and the boys had spent enough time hunting non-traditional prey in the woods in their younger years to have the basics ingrained, but Mother Nature didn't really care where you'd been or how good you were. She still had her ways of reminding you to respect her.

There were underground streams all over the area, some surfacing for small stretches, bubbling along for only yards at a time before vanishing into the loam.

There was no evidence around them that the earth had suddenly opened up at any point. No suspicious depressions, no soft ground underfoot beyond the ocassional muddy patch brought by the little streams. They circled and listened and watched, and were met by birdsong and random angry squirrels. Dean decided squirrels had only two speeds: dead or psychotic. The area felt clear, if anything in the world ever could. Whatever was going on up there, it wasn't brought by humans or their history or their way of messing up everything they touched.

When late afternoon mellowed to early evening, Dean used way too much lighter fluid to start a fire in the existing pit. Sam wondered to himself whether Dean should go into pyrotechnics if their lives ever took a turn for the mundane; his only other choice was going to be _arsonist._

They had both agreed they would keep watch together to see if anything changed or happened. There was no way Sam was getting any sleep anyway. Not with Dean bellowing "Tell us where you are, Josh!" every so often like it was the funniest thing ever. Dean had made dozens of those damn little hanging-man stick figures out of Q-tips and hung them all over for days after they saw the movie, until dad had told him enough was enough. At least he'd stopped humming 'Kumbaya' under his breath.

They ate around the fire as the sky purpled; it was going to stay clear.

They theorized about whether the phenomenon was physical or psychic. Concentrations of toxic gases collecting in cracks in the basalt? Electromagnetic waves, old missle silos, a stray volcanic vent? They were still in the Cascade range, part of the Pacific ring of fire.

"Nothing's really physical anyway," Sam said.

"Metaphysics would really make me happy right now, Sam," Dean said, stoking the fire. "I can never wait for you to wax philisophical on me."

"I don't know," Sam said. "There's enough space between the atoms everything's made of to allow for all kinds of stuff to hide. Maybe the right conditions can open those spaces, sometimes."

Dean gazed at him across the fire. "Not without leaving evidence behind."

"Depends on whether it's the kind of evidence something with only five senses can pick up," Sam said, gazing back.

They'd done this their whole lives, back and forth, when Sam could get Dean to participate. Dean's focus was always central to acting now and thinking later, the shortest distance between two points, and Sam widened the periphery to keep him from spinning in place.

Sam wondered again what the hell they were really looking for out there - what had happened to others, or what had happened to him and Dean.

"Some_thing_," Dean echoed as if waiting for him to elaborate.

Sam shrugged and leaned back against the cedar he was sitting under.

"Empirical evidence or dumbass metaphysical evidence?" Dean said, and Sam laughed.

-I-

Sam startled awake, not realizing he'd dropped into a light doze. He wasn't sure where he was at first, until he saw the fire and felt the rough bark of the tree he'd leaned against. As he sat up, he centered on Dean, finding him painted golden and glowing in the uneven light of the tamped down flames.

Dean was standing and staring into the darkness behind Sam so intently that Sam fell to watching him, as if he was a retriever on point. It wasn't the first time the thought had occurred to Sam. It had to be somewhere around 3 or 4 am, judging by the color of the sky and the fact that the winter constellations were back out.

"What is it?" Sam said when he couldn't take the quiet any longer. He climbed to his feet, muscles stiffer than he thought they'd be, and came to stand next to Dean to watch the darkness. Still, he had to endure roughly another minute of it before Dean's voice broke through the crackle of flames.

"The river," Dean said. "Runs under everything."

Sam let that puzzle him for a moment, and he didn't ask for more because Dean was so obviously _elsewhere_. At first he thought of the Columbia Gorge, which wasn't that far away, and then the Yakima river, much closer, but when he let the word _everything_ sink in, it brought a touch of anxiety with it. Dean wasn't using the word casually - not in that tone of voice, not with that thousand-yard stare. Not with the magnetic field of his spirit fraying Sam's threads and throwing shapes against the seen and unseen surfaces around them. River didn't always mean _water_.

He wasn't sure if Dean knew he was talking out loud, so he waited. He felt the fine hairs on the nape of his neck stir at more than just the way Dean was acting, but he didn't say anything else.

It stayed quiet. Nothing stirred or came out of the dark, and there was no change in the larger atmosphere; only in the one between the men standing shoulder to shoulder below.

Whatever Dean was tapping into, it broke, and he finally rolled his shoulders and looked at Sam with annoyance. "When did you get up?"

"Right about the time you heard something in the woods," Sam said, like it was the truth, like he hadn't heard the disturbance in Dean's _everything_ loud enough to snap him awake. "You've been awake way, way too long, man, if you're getting hazy on the details."

Dean shoved him a step to the right and walked back around the fire, keeping an eye on Sam while he added more wood.

At dawn, they took one more look around and packed out. It looked like it was going to rain.

-I-


	6. Chapter 6

**If Belief Was Enough, 6**  
(c)2006 b stearns  
Disclaimer: Really hard to keep track of plot holes in a plot...about holes. Many thanks to all who've reviewed or added this as a favorite.

* * *

-I-

It started raining mid morning, a persistent drizzle that threatened to go on all day. Neither of them thought talking to anybody else would do any good, and Sam had an unspoken trepidation about what might come out of Dean's mouth in front of strangers. He reflected that it'd always been a problem, but lately it was pure honesty and not patented, thinly veiled Winchester sarcasm.

After Dean's enigmatic and unconscious offer of information in the dark, Sam wanted to look at the rivers.

"Why?" Dean was grouchy. This was generally the case when something he hoped for didn't come flying out of the bushes or drop on him from above. He was more restless than usual, checking and rechecking ammo, eyes everywhere but Sam.

"Nothing else to do," Sam said, and that was true enough.

"First camping and now _sightseeing_," Dean said, making a curse of the word. He braced his hands on the hood of the Impala and looked in Sam's general direction across it, distracted and annoyed. "What the hell's going on with you, Sam? Besides everything."

Sam couldn't help but find it funny. Going on with _him_. He turned his head to grin to show a little throat, so at least Dean wouldn't take it as full-on mocking. "We're kind of out of options until we think of more. Won't hurt to see more of the area."

"What are we looking for?" Dean said, voice lowered into something Sam recognized as a warning.

"We won't know until we find it," Sam said, grin fading as he looked back at Dean.

"It drives me nuts when you do this," Dean said. "This evasive thing, like you know more than I do or you've got a secret or something, like I've been browbeating you all our lives and you can't trust me with what goes on in your head."

"I don't have a secret," Sam said, not realizing in time that he wasn't supposed to hear that. "But you _have_ been browbeating me all our lives." Said with all due irony, trailing off too late.

Dean lifted his head and froze, staring at him directly for the first time all morning. "Now you're reading my goddamn mind on top of everything else?"

Sam hated the moment of panic that went with the words, on both sides. "No," he said quickly. "You said it aloud."

"No," Dean said. "I'm pretty sure I can tell the difference between what I say aloud and what I don't."

"Not really," Sam said. He braced his hands on the engine-warmth of the hood and stared back. "Think for a minute that I'd let it get out of hand or let anybody else hear anything they shouldn't?"

Dean didn't answer vocally, but the expression on his face was something only Sam or their father would ever have been able to decipher; an incriminating gratitude. "When this is over, we're gonna find a way to get me back to normal."

Sam did laugh outright, then, still facing Dean this time. "You need a lot more work that we have in our lifetime." _Our lifetime_, as if there was nothing separate.

Dean straightened away from the car. "I'd laugh but I was raised to have some respect for the alternately-abled," he said. He was visibly uneasy, but Sam was sure not everyone would be able to pick it up. They stood out there and looked at each other with hair and lashes beaded with the faintest mist of rain, too close to see the forest or the trees any longer.

-I-

The Yakima river ran close alongside Ellensburg and neither its banks or the pattern it wound across the landscape meant anything to them. Sam couldn't pick up any vibes and didn't see any connection to the mini-streams they'd run into on the ridge. A silent drive east took them into Vantage, and the wind whipped their clothes as they parked at the small history museum that overlooked the Columbia. There was a natural cut in the rocks below that served as a boat launch and camp area, and it was empty - probably due to the weather. They stood above for awhile with their faces in the wind off the water and looked across the wide, smooth-flowing expanse. It was nearly a mile across at that point of the gorge, exposing millions of years of the world's bones. A thousand millennia of changing water levels were visible in the erosion of the facing wall, gradual steps of rise and retreat, smooth sandstone and exposed metamorphic rock.

"It's a river," Dean said finally.

"Wow, thanks," Sam said. They were quiet awhile longer. Then Sam said, "It's probably moved a lot over time."

Dean sighed. "That's nice." When Sam didn't take the bait, he added, "It's never been right where the ridge is, though. There's too much basalt and glacial till left, so no river's ever run through there. That was ocean _floor_ the last time it saw water. I mean, if that's what you're getting at."

Sam felt unreasonably giddy and found himself trying to keep from laughing. He wasn't sure whether he was getting constant feedback off Dean or whether he was just grateful that nothing had tried to kill them yet. He hadn't felt it until they'd gotten out of the car. It didn't make any sense to him and for once he didn't care. He watched Dean shift from foot to foot and scowl at the water.

"I don't get it," Dean said. "We usually have some idea by now, and I don't get it. What if we never figure it out, or there's nothing to figure out?"

Sam shrugged. "We can't solve them all."

"_Dude stop fuckin' spying on me_!" Dean shouted, stalking away, and Sam shook his head. He wasn't supposed to hear that either, apparently, and it took him a moment to figure out why. Then his eyes widened, and he went after Dean at a trot.

"Wait a second," he said, keeping a step behind, unconsciously giving Dean space. "Did you just doubt Dad? Did you just have half a second of wondering whether we should even be out here?"

Dean spun on him, already pointing, the type of bent-elbow pointing that was less accusatory and more

_let me tell you something_. "Don't put words in my mouth."

"Hey, newsflash," Sam said, spreading his arms in the rain. "Not everything is something we can figure out. Not everything _should_ be figured out."

"Oh, that makes a lot of sense," Dean said. "Something's _eating_ people up here, Sam! Something's fucking with people's heads. It doesn't matter how long it takes to figure it out."

"I didn't say anything about giving up," Sam said, pulling his arms back in so he could show Dean his palms instead. "You're gonna have to think outside your crazy ass, demon-ridden, alternate dimension mindset for five minutes. Maybe we do have something that purposely grabs people, but it's got no pattern that we can see. We don't have a history for the area that suggests a curse, or ancient burial ground, or any of the other stuff that usually makes sense in our world. _Our_ world," he emphasized when Dean rolled his eyes. Sam didn't need Dean to say it - his entire posture alone said _yeah right, 'our', like you lay claim to anything. _"Last night you said, 'the river runs under everything'. Do you remember that?"

Dean eyed him warily. "No."

"You don't remember everything you say," Sam said. "And Dad isn't always right."

Dean waved a dismissive hand at him. "The river doesn't run under everything. It's just some bullshit that came out of me after a week awake. Standing out in the middle of the woods, doing nothing."

Sam shook his head. "I don't think so. It's possible that you might be able to pick things up that no one else can, while you're..." he paused, gesturing aimlessly in midair. "Whatever this is. While the membrane or whatever it is that holds our souls close to our physical bodies is missing. Like the amniotic sac broke and it's just water everywhere."

Dean sneered at him. "Jesus, the stuff you come up with." He sighed and gestured toward the river. "This doesn't have anything to do with anything. We're gonna go back out there and try a different spot, and find this thing. And if the usual remedies don't work, then we'll know it's some geological anomaly or that the missing people were dumb or crazy or both. Or they were eaten by bears. Or went into the witness protection program."

"So you're admitting that it might not be supernatural," Sam said.

Dean looked at him, as closed up as he was capable of. "What do you want, Sam? Will it make you happy if I just say I don't have any idea what I'm doing, anymore?"

Sam looked back with impatience and tucked his hands in his jacket pockets. "How the hell is it that after our whole lives together, you still can't figure out where I'm headed? I'm not jerking you around."

There was nothing to hear for a long moment but the faint patter of rain and the distant idea of motion from the river. Dean dropped his eyes first because he had to admit he was being contrary just to do it. He felt some underlying suggestion of weariness but knew it wasn't going to translate itself into an ability to rest; for all he knew he'd go on like this forever, eternal consciousness, unrelenting awareness of everything until putting a gun in his own mouth began to seem like common sense. "I'm lost," he said softly, unaware that it was audible, unaware that Sam made a sudden motion toward him as if to grab him or just _touch_ him, but then ran his hands through his own damp hair instead, eyes wrenched shut.

"Hot chocolate," Dean said.

Sam opened his eyes and blinked at the non sequitur. He waited to see if it was meant to be heard.

"It's a good day for hot chocolate," Dean said, nodding. "Not that canned powder stuff either, the good stuff, with milk. Like that crap they rip you off with at Starbucks." He turned his head to look at Sam. "Are you listening, or what?"

"There's pretty much nowhere left on earth that you can't find a Starbucks," Sam said, face raised to the sky to keep tears at bay. The wind let the rain-mist hit them sideways.

"We can hang out in there and research volcanic shit and see if maybe there are other things this could be," Dean said. "You know. Other things."

Sam purposely kept his expression neutral even though Dean was carefully not looking directly at him again. "Mt. St. Helens is still active," he said. "More active lately, anyway. And not that far from here."

"Far...as in geologically speaking," Dean said gruffly.

"Geologically speaking," Sam agreed, and if he ever loved Dean more than he did right then, he wasn't sure he would be able to remember it.

-I-

The Starbucks even had a fireplace, and Dean parked himself in front of it with his laptop and scowled at Sam again for moving them further from the couple by the window. They had only glanced at Dean, certainly longer than they had to but nothing more, and the twenty-something barista had scalded and dumped the milk twice until Sam made Dean go sit down by himself in the corner. There was actually a little shin-kicking involved and Sam was glad he was taller and could invoke a bit of looming.

"She wanted my number," Dean said.

"Aren't you trying to plug enough holes in this place as it is?" Sam said.

Dean slammed his cardboard cup down on the table. Luckily the top was still on. "Did you just make a joke? An _off color_ joke? Is this a late birthday present?"

Sam shook his head at the tabletop and scratched at a surface painted to look like a checkerboard. "That's all you get. So. If it's not always visible, then it could be some kind of vibration that opens and closes the ground. Earthquakes give clays and sand liquid properties."

"Neutrinos," Dean said.

"Okay, no," Sam said. "And I hate string theory, so don't start."

"'I am made from the dust of the stars, and the ocean flows in my veins'," Dean said.

"Don't quote Rush lyrics at me, either," Sam said. "You're the one who said it's not a white hole."

"Just throwing some stuff at the wall, seeing what sticks," Dean said, then closed his laptop. "They don't have wireless in here."

"We don't need it," Sam said, wrapping both hands around his hot chocolate. "What else? Tremors can cause land to shift away and back, and maybe it wouldn't always leave a visible trace on the surface."

Dean sipped at his drink, eyes darting around the shop and out the front windows. He made a sound under his breath, something between a grunt and a thoughtful hum. "Me and dad found a haunting a few years ago that wasn't really anything. It was just machinery in the basement, putting off sound at nineteen hertz, below human hearing. The eyeball has a resonant frequency of nineteen hertz. Same thing happens to wineglasses if you find their frequency. It can rattle stuff or break it, or get you seeing things that aren't there." This was solid ground, this knowledge, and the invocation of his father. "Infrasound. Zero to twenty hertz."

"Can it make you hear things, too?" Sam said, raising his eyebrows.

Dean shrugged. "Sure. Turned it off, ghosts went away." He paused. "We don't have machinery out here big enough to do that to an entire landscape, unless those old missle silo rumors are true and they're doing some sort of experiments underground." They looked at each other and shook their heads in unison. "Magnetic field stronger here because the mantle is thinner?"

"That could mess with people's heads, but I don't see it opening holes in the place," Sam said. "Maybe it's a combination of things, just in this spot. When do you wanna head back out?"

"In a couple of hours," Dean said. "Why, you in a hurry?"

Sam grinned.

-I-


	7. Chapter 7

Everyone's been beyond kind. Humor me just a bit further.

* * *

**If Belief Was Enough - 7**  
(c)2006 b stearns  
Warnings: Gratuitous Shel Silverstein crack!reference. Weeping, hallucinations, angst, self pity...and that's just from the _author._ This installment also contains the longest run-on sentence ever, all in the name of setting a tone. 

-I-

"Are you ever gonna sleep again?" Sam said.

They'd been debating for awhile about how close to get to Tripod Flats again. When late afternoon became early evening and the rain didn't let up, it was by mutual agreement that they parked as far up the main trail as they could without screwing up the car. Then they could still stake the place out without spending a miserable, damp night huddled under some tree. The Impala was definitely not meant for fourwheeling, so they were only about 500 yards up. They'd taken another walk around to look and listen and received nothing but another half mile of wear on their shoes. Once darkness hit, there wasn't much to do but sit in the car. And talk. Dean's least favorite thing to do.

Dean shrugged. "It would be good. But it's not like I'm going crazy from the lack of it. You ever know anybody else awake this long who wasn't ready for the nuthouse?"

"So it's not bugging you," Sam said, waiting to see what kind of truth he got.

"I'm just not tired," Dean said. "I haven't actually tried that hard to sleep, so, who knows. When this is over I'll give it a shot. What's wrong, you sad about not being the world's foremost insomniac?"

Sam shook his head a little in exasperation and let the quiet settle between them again. The rain made a random rhythm on the car, and he focused on that. The EMF meter sat within reach on the back seat and had not gone off once the whole time they'd been on this trip. Sam looked at the dim greenish glow of it in his peripheral vision and thought about whether the things in the trunk should be setting it off since he was sure some of them were at least a little more than just _things_.

"Me and Sam are nothing alike," Dean murmured.

Sam was careful not to turn his head and look at his brother. _Amen_, he thought. He was worried about where it was going and what had brought it on, but so far it was just factual.

"If we weren't related, there's no way he'd come anywhere near me," Dean said. "If he didn't have a reason to, there's no way."

Sam waited. He really had to say something, but he didn't want another _dude quit fuckin' spying on me_ type of freakout, so he pressed two fingers to one temple and shook his head. This was too much.

"What," Dean said without looking up.

"You're a pain in my ass _and_ my head," Sam said.

"Stop whining," Dean said. "You just wanna hold hands."

Sam didn't respond, too weary to formulate a fitting comeback. Dean stared back out into the rainswept dark of the forest and drummed his fingers on his knees, and Sam tried to clear his thoughts enough to relax. It stung that Dean thought he would discard him, but, Sam had to admit that from Dean's perspective, it probably looked that way. A thousand moments of evidence to the contrary - Sam returning to cut him loose in the orchard, or flirting unwittingly with the worst of the dark side to keep him alive - would never make a difference. Sam wished Dean would say stuff like that and know he was saying it so he could retort with _yeah, mostly because you're so uncool_ and _I expect you to grow a mullet anytime now_ and then they could trade insults happily. On the same level playing field.

Dean would never quite win the unconditional approval of their father and Sam would never quite have all of Dean's trust. The things they wanted most were unattainable; Sam realized that was probably why they wanted those things the most.

Sam listened to the haphazard patter of rain on the roof of the car, finding aimless melodies in the way the trees above caused a release of larger spatters. That, and the subaudible background radiation heralding Dean as the center of the universe was enough to keep him from getting any reasonable thought process going and keep him awake at the same time. It was a strange limbo to be in. So when Dean's hand landed on the back of his neck, it was a relief he wasn't quite prepared for, and he was unsure which way was up for a moment.

"Hey, hey," Dean said, watching Sam brace a hand on the dashboard.

Sam didn't say anything, just lowered his head and held on. His head was perfectly clear but not entirely his anymore. He had one moment of wondering whether the world had done this on purpose and struck a balance by making sure he was a counterpoint to Dean. They had always been this way. The revenant had only been an accidental means to an end, shoving their noses into the only truth they should never have ignored.

"It'll be okay, Sam," Dean said, and Sam didn't care if he was supposed to hear that or not; he needed to.

-I-

_get the baby_

_the baby is crying and there's no one left to help_

_sammysammy get sammy_

Dean turned his head away from the window without realizing how long he'd been staring out into the dark. Apparently it had been long enough for it to stop raining and begin to clear. There was no moment of disorientation, just a memory of talking to Sam and then not, for an unspecified amount of time. The sound that had disturbed him, the sad and desperate sobs of an infant, followed him back to self-awareness. He held his breath to listen. It was cold, colder than it had any right to be in May, but he wasn't shivering.

The baby wasn't annoying. The baby made him feel _frantic_. It was, in his memory, Sam in the weeks after they lost their mother, feeling the loss. Dean would have done anything to fix it, and his only means of doing so at four was to crawl into the crib with him and make them both less alone.

He turned his head, automatically seeking present-day Sam. He was only able to focus because Sam had closed the circuit again. Only then did he realize that Sam had a fistful of his jacket, hand wrapped into the material at Dean's shoulder. Sam was staring at him and had been for awhile, unable to move other than to hold on. The moon was half full and low in the west, casting an almost fluorescent glow in the absence of any artificial light. Sam's eyes were the brightest Dean had ever seen in the weird, washed-out light, even when they should have been indeterminate in the darkness, and the desolation in his face was even starker as a result.

"Okay, so," Dean said softly, then cleared his throat and pretended it was disuse that made him so hoarse. His voice startled Sam even though the latter was staring right at him. "What's it sound like to you, Starsky?"

The dark flames of Sam's eyes flickered away and then back toward Dean in the million-gray darkness, his trembling evident in his breathing and the edges of his bangs. Sam felt the lie before it formed, and the fact that it should have been true only plummeted him further into the version of hell he was already testing with his toes. He wanted to say that he had nothing left to lose but himself and Dean, and he couldn't; he couldn't have it be true. Saying it aloud would solidify it. Dean was standing in the sun again in his memory, eyes green as envy, telling him _words only have the power you assign them,_ so this admission would stay close to his heart so as not become an agreement between himself and the dark.

The voice of his brother screamed and screamed from somewhere just out of sight. _Dean_ screamed and screamed. This was the thing chosen to try and pull Sam in. If Sam listened to it much longer, he would go; he knew that just as simply as he knew the real Dean was solid in his grip. Warm jacket caught under his hand, long-faded aftershave and coffee, himself and nothing else.

"Jess," Sam said, a whisper at most.

Dean stared at him, too distracted with the wordless wail of a bereft little boy somewhere out there in the dark to detect the lie. Dean had heard everything the No Survivors Crash Demon had said out of its lying, ruinous mouth as well as Sam had, and private hells weren't any smaller than the nine circles he already guessed at. This is what it did? It pulled up what you couldn't stand and dangled it in front of you until you ran to save what you could? Dean would have been a little more rational about it after all he'd seen had he not been splayed open and wearing his soul on the outside. All it meant to his higher brain functions was that Sam was right, it wasn't a sentient phenomenon, because that would make it the dumbest thing they'd ever run into. The voice he heard in the dark had not existed for more than twenty years, and the voice he thought Sam heard had been dead long enough to make no difference. There was nothing to save. It was ridiculous. It was a trick, an aural warping, an echo dredged from the brain stems of primates who had always feared the dark as much as they feared being alone.

_Hey Dean_, what remained of his frontal lobe whispered, _make you wonder who you've really got left?_

No point gathering anyone close to see you to old age when you never meant to live to be old.

"I guess we found it, then," Dean said, shooting for detached interest. "Or it found us. We'll just - " he opened the car door as he spoke, not even considering trying to get Sam to loosen his grip. It was this simple - they'd have a look at the thing and he'd know what to do about it. That was the way of things and always would be.

He found himself leaning out over a black maw in the earth, the icy exhalation of it whispering on his face, jagged edges torn into the dust and falling into nothing and fuck him six ways to Sunday if the car wasn't _straddling_ the goddamn thing.

That amazed him enough to make him keep staring, and then of course he was already in the event horizon. He'd find everything in there, it'd be quiet, and until he went in he'd be uncomfortable. It was so much easier to _go_, like slipping beneath warm water. He had to get the baby anyway, there was no one to save the baby -

Sam was not as fast as his older brother in some things and never would be, but he was more in the bone and muscle department by the fact of height alone as well as sheer reach. Sam yanked Dean back and then reached over him to slam the door. Closing the door didn't make it all _stop_, but it kept them from just giving in. They'd have to open the doors to get out, and if they could use that barrier, they wouldn't fall. The extra step of having to pull at the door handles would keep them from falling forever.

"Don't look," Sam said. He still couldn't bring himself to raise his voice above a whisper. "Listening's bad enough, just don't look."

Sam was right. It wasn't quite as bad with the car between them and where the sidewalk ended, but it wasn't gone or even tolerable. Dean still had the urge to _get to Sam_.

_No. No, Sam's got a death grip on you. Pressed up against your back and both arms around you, dude, I'm so going to rag on him when we get out of this._ "Sam," he said aloud, "Sam, Sam Sam. You're in the car with me."

"Yeah," Sam said. "It's just us."

"We're gonna go nuts if we stay here. We gotta get out."

"We might have to wait until it moves again," Sam whispered. "Think, Dean. We know what it does but not how or why. If we're gonna make it stop, we have to know how to close it."

"For good," Dean finished. "Close it for good. Okay. We can do this. It's definitely physical, it's not like some weird dimensional thing." _Sam is here, Sam is here, Sam's heart is keeping time on your back, don't move, don't open the door._

"What were we talking about, before?" Sam said. _Dean is here, I've got him, the voice in the dark is lying, listen to the real Dean._ Sam laid the side of his head against Dean's back and willed him to keep talking. "I can't remember, what did we think it might be, if it was moving around?"

"Infrasound," Dean said, trying to focus. His hands kept reaching for the door even though he wasn't sure they should; he felt something precarious just waiting for the straws and camels to do their thing. Boxes and boxes of fragile things leaned out over the top stair of a flight that was endless. All his boundaries were shifted out of place until none of the circles were closed, and he was losing sand out of every hourglass he owned. "Sam left but he came back," he said suddenly, the words torn out of him, one more box popping open on the stairs. "I let him go and he came back, _nobody else has ever come back!"_

Sam shook him, a single jolt. "Don't do this now, Dean," Sam said aloud, finding his voice again. "I'm right here. I don't remember what infrasound is. _Dean_!" Sam wasn't even as fearful of what Dean might be hearing as he was of what it was doing to Dean's still open and unguarded consciousness. Soul. He could say soul to himself in the dark, having seen a few himself, but never on the living, never outlining the living in silver and sparking with Dean's inability to wait or stop.

"Low frequency sound waves that people can't hear," Dean said, making a declaration of it, clutching at Sam's arms to get loose and to hold on, unable to decide which he needed more. He stopped for a long breath, and covered his ears, hoping the crying would stop. It didn't, proving his hypothesis, but there was no comfort in that because by then his brain was resonating with something that had jostled his own buried and chosen anguish into reality. "You can't hear anything between zero and twenty hertz but it can mess with your head and how you react to stuff." He could hear his own voice with his hands over his ears, the words made sense, the knowledge something he could hold onto. Nobody bothered to measure the resonant frequency of souls, no, some fool somewhere was busy trying to weigh them while his was getting so dense he was afraid it would gather to the center of him like stardust and fusion would start.

This was all science-stuff and perfectly natural and not their thing, and they were in over their heads right up to where the thing swallowed them and the car and they were never seen again.

Dean realized there was someone holding on to him, but they just didn't know any better. They didn't hear the baby. He reached for the door again, unable to stand a sorrow only he could hear, a sorrow that had been voiced by an infant but maybe was only being reflected back in a familiar pattern now that the bearer was so much older. "Sam's alone," he said, never hearing himself, his tone indicating that the idea was horrifying. "I have to get to Sam. Everything's fine if I get to Sam."

Sam shook him again. "It's me," he said, unable to keep the panic out of his voice. "Dean, come on. I'm here, we've gotta think our way out of this."

Dean's head dropped forward suddenly as if he'd decided to give in to reason, but Sam could feel him holding his breath. Hunched over holding his breath and covering his ears. The screaming went on outside, the voice just a bouncing of something off Sam's worst fears, but the real Dean screamed unheard, worse and more damaging. Bottled and evasive to save what belonged only to him and couldn't be taken, strung together with wire that stung trespassers and warded even the invited away.

Sam hated it that the first sob made things easier; Dean shattering in front of him made the voice outside less important and easier to bear.

"You're not _my_ Sam," Dean sobbed, choking the words out. "You used to be my Sam."

Sam held on as hard as he could, trying to get through, remembering that he'd told Dean two days earlier. _I see what happened and I can kind of get an idea of where your edges are, because we were bridged for a moment, but I don't know if there's a way to put you back_. This close, the edges were plain. All the parts of Dean that had been left in tatters by his last desperate attempt to get away from the thing at the door were easier to feel.

Whatever was messing with their heads was hard on Sam, but it was intolerable to Dean in his present condition. That was worse to Sam than anything else, and he had to stop it, whatever that took. He had no idea how the revenant had managed to bridge them, but he also realized that an occasional brushing of hands had not shut the static down the way he thought it had; this full-body hug was like full immersion instead of just closing the circuit. The opportunity had not come up before, or he might have had a better idea of the scope of what had happened to them and how far Dean was overrunning himself. He suddenly had a better glimpse of what Dean was made up of, ideas and almost-images the five senses didn't accommodate, too much to withstand at once: fate falling short and one voice in the void, reaching and never accepting, fear and self doubt and determination, deep amusement and secretive awe, blinding hope and the faith of the last man standing, an utter lack of patience, incapable of giving up, burdened and struggling for purchase and frighteningly naive, bravestubbornadorationand -

Dean tensed and threw his head back, dragging air audibly into startled lungs, an automatic physical reaction to an invasion he had neither presence of mind or wish to repel.

Sam was gathering everything that was _Dean _in intangible hands without moving, smoothing the edges together, pulling things back to the center, becoming the center of gravity without understanding how.

It was only a glimpse, too short to fully process; to protect himself and his brother, he folded the edges closed before he could forget who he was and before his own edges could become indistinguishable from Dean's. He could hold Dean together forever if he had to, he wouldn't mind it, but it would never be what Dean wanted; Sam had never known better what Dean would want than he did right then. He _understood_, this once; he _got it_, and would spend a lifetime trying to decipher that one best and brightest moment of knowing.

Dean abruptly relaxed against him as the edges folded together, still breathing but dead weight in the hands of the focal point of his life thus far.

The moment things went quiet in Sam's head, he already missed Dean; there was nothing else to hear but the tortured, wordless screaming from outside. He held on to his brother and tried not to listen, glad Dean didn't have to share it, waiting for the thing below them to move or do anything other than skewer him in place, prisoner and specimen.

All he could do was hold on.

-I-


	8. Chapter 8

Love and love and love for all the reviews. If I'm incomprehensible, tell me where so's I can kick it into shape. A million thanks.

* * *

**If Belief Was Enough, 8**  
(c)2006 b stearns 

-I-

_Cle Elum, WA_

Sam couldn't shake the deja vu this time. He'd stood guard before, but only one other time had it been to wait to see whether Dean was going to be the same person when he awoke. Mercury and quicksilver and gunpowder, but fundamentally stable and recognizeable all the same, no matter what he'd done or had done to him. One day it would be too much, something would go too far, and Sam feared that day more than he did most things. He'd already had two brushes with something else using Dean's eyes to look at him. He needed the third to _not_ turn out to be a Dean so messed up that he wasn't salvageable.

Dean was constant, no matter how long Sam was gone or how much he changed or grew up or grew distant. Dean was the only conerstone and home base and _ollie ollie oxen free_, safe, that Sam had ever known no matter how often he showed the opposite. It was too much to put on anyone, much less a sibling out on the very same ledges that Sam danced on, and maybe running had been to save them both as well as find his own way.

His pupils had reacted when Sam lifted each eyelid. That was good; wherever Dean had gone, at least his body reacted to _something_. If he wanted to sleep for a week to make up for a week of wakefulness, Sam would let him, but he had to make sure sleep was all it was. He tried to remember the Glasgow coma scale but figured it was best if he didn't, since it applied to brain injury and not _I think I sealed my brother up so far that he can't get out. _On the Winchester scale of In Over Our Heads, Sam scored this one fairly high.

He'd moved them west, roughly twenty minutes away to Cle Elum, to a small motel next to a Perkin's. Something he didn't bother questioning made him choose to head further from the river, not just from the ridge. It was strangely quiet and sparsely occupied that morning, and Sam was glad for it because he had to carry Dean in and it already felt weird enough - it didn't need to look weird too. Dean who didn't wake up, who didn't react to shaking or yelling, who didn't care about cold water, who couldn't hear Sam sob in panic. If it was going to be more than a day, Sam realized he'd have to take Dean to a hospital out of fear of dehydration.

He didn't remember all of what had happened the previous night. He had at first, but it had begun to dwindle as the hours passed, leaving the same feeling he got after a too-vivid dream. He was no longer sure exactly how long the screaming had gone on before the quiet hit him like a wall, the absence of pain almost too much to bear or believe for a moment. It had been a good while before he'd had the nerve to check to see if the ground under the car was sealed up again. He'd already known it was over, but hope was poison in places where just opening a door got you a headful of crazy ideas or possession of the finest and most final kind. Sam had still felt like something was after-echoing around him, jittering along his most fundamental connections. Maybe things were closed for now but there was some sort of residual come-down happening.

_You're not my Sam_

It had not occurred to Sam until then that Dean - and most likely their father - had not reconciled little Sam with adult Sam. Four years out of sight, among the mundane, from teen to man, leaving a clear line of demarcation. He was no longer and could never be that Sam again, not the one Dean had been talking about when his soul had been doing the talking. On their current side of the line, their existence had dwindled to only each other, as it had before, but with such different rules. Not as matched up but trying. That was, if the idea of existence was held to the quality or quantity of a life. Sam wasn't sure if _dwindle_ was the right word, either, except that right then it felt like catastrophic collapse of everything they were, to themselves and each other, shored up by only the simplest of needs and ideas.

He had been imbued with a hell of a lot more than just a headful of Dean. He'd thought he was getting an idea just from what Dean threw off, until trying to keep him from spinning out into tapestry too thin to keep a pattern had given him the - ability, awareness, _need?_ - to tread where he had no right to. If Dean remembered any of it, they would never be the same. Anything they'd ever been to each other had been given and granted and gifted, and later earned, but never taken. Dean would never have allowed anybody in that far. Even a bond Sam had been born to only held so long and so far...

_You're not my Sam_

There was a guilty thrill to having been so close. Diffusing a bomb that could have opened the world had not left Sam unscathed; he felt flashes of what it might have been like to wear Dean around the way the revenant had. Dean had spent his time creating his own myth of himself, painting himself into corners and locking down behind his ideals until the way out was as obscured as the way in. It felt okay to do that, and Sam suddenly wanted that when he wasn't keeping his thoughts purposely focused. Salting the door because who knows what's out there; smudging the room; checking Dean.

There were things in this life worse than death...and more intimate than sex. How the hell he'd managed both with his own brother in the same night, he didn't know and it didn't even phase him in ways it would have...when he'd been younger.

Sam had a feeling the stitches wouldn't always hold. Dean had always been better at stitches. Sam would repair whatever he had to, even if it meant Dean running like hell soon after.

-I-

It was quiet and there was no sense of disconnection; he wasn't feeling like he was missing anything. He'd done this before, recently, and that was all he remembered. There was a vague sense of needing to make sure his world was intact, but he couldn't narrow the parameters down enough to figure out what he was worried about.

Yeah, well. Maybe he'd dreamed the whole damn thing.

When Dean tried to roll over, there was a hand pressing down on his shoulder. He opened his own eyes to Sam's and the dark, tousled hair tumbling into them. "Hold it," Sam said, leaning over him. "Name, rank, serial number."

"Dean Winchester," Dean said. "Boss of you. 10,000 Cheerios."

Sam grinned and pushed away, thumping Dean on the shoulder as he did. The impact brought back a flash to Dean of where he'd been recently but not how things had ended. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment, uninterested in asking for an explanation until he could see what there was to remember. If he was injured, he couldn't feel it; if Sam was injured, it wasn't bad enough to keep him from being flip. The ceiling was not the same, he knew that much. The sun was setting and it had been the middle of the damn night the last he'd known, and he was also in the bed furthest from the door. Sometimes Sam talked too much, about stuff that Dean thought didn't need discussion, and sometimes Sam said more than Dean could ever grasp without a single word. Sam had told Dean everything he needed to know in a couple of glances and a grin.

The glance and grin were back in Dean's direct line of sight, because Sam was leaning over him again, one hand held up and two fingers raised and playing it off as a joke. "How many?"

That bad, then. That scared.

Dean raised his right hand just high enough to flip Sam off. "You tell me," he said. "I'm not getting up yet. So, you know, go outside and play."

"Yeah, you _are_ getting up," Sam said. "You're gonna get something to drink, at least, because it's probably been about twenty four hours."

Dean propped himself up on his elbows and blinked at Sam in the remainder of the daylight, not caring what time it was. "Did we close the thing up, at least?"

Sam shrugged. "We're not in it, that's all I know. You don't remember anything?"

Dean opened his mouth to say something, and for the first time in days Sam didn't get a chance to find out what it would have been. "Sort of." He sat up the rest of the way and passed his hands over his face, more of a diversion than a need to put himself in order.

"What did you hear?" Sam said softly. He didn't need to know but he needed Dean to talk to him about it. If he acknowledged it, then it was all real, and not just real, but forgiven.

"I don't remember," Dean said curtly, obviously lying, and through his disappointment Sam couldn't begrudge him the right to it. Sam had already lied about it and would go on doing so.

Sam handed him a bottle of water, peace offering and demand, and Dean grabbed it.

-I-

Dean was awake long enough to eat and make sure in his own backhanded way whether Sam was really okay, then slept through the night. Sam startled awake every so often from things that didn't feel like dreamwork, and he never caught enough of the pieces to get more than impressions that felt of loneliness and evasion. He finally got up to poke around online, plugging in keywords for everything they'd been talking about. It was fully light when Dean sat up.

"It's too much to hope you're looking at porn, isn't it," Dean said.

Sam read aloud. "'Winds blowing over mountain ranges can generate infrasounds that last for days. They speculate that increases in suicides reported from the Alps and the western United States "may be due to some as yet unknown biological response" to such infrasound events.'"

Dean got up and pulled a t-shirt over his head, padding over barefoot and leaning over Sam's shoulder to look. "Dude, the Christian Science Monitor?" he said.

Sam shrugged. "Google's fault, not mine. So here we've got wind patterns and we've got one really big river. Kind of a stretch, but...hey. We saw and heard the result."

Dean didn't lean away. Sam cocked his head a little, fingers paused over the keys, waiting.

"So you saw it, then," Dean said.

His tone had that quality of finality to it, so Sam dropped his hands to the table. "Yeah."

"Before I knew what was going on," Dean said. "Before I was paying attention and you grabbed my jacket. You opened the other door, didn't you."

It wasn't a question. Sam didn't answer because he knew he didn't need to. Here it came, everything, including _dude quit fuckin' spying on me._

"So how come you didn't go in, Sam?" Dean said, lowering his voice. "Just because you knew what was happening? Are we that tough?"

Sam took in a breath when he realized that Dean was almost fishing but was also balking at the same time. Neither was like him. "Because you were with me," he said. "You stopped me by just being there."

Dean leaned away and ruffled the hair on the back of Sam's head, something he hadn't done since Sam had reached his full height. Sam snorted but didn't turn around, so he didn't see Dean's face when the latter said, "Headache gone?"

Again, not coming straight out and asking the real question. _Am I closed up again?_ Sam clicked the laptop shut and turned his head in Dean's general direction but was careful not to turn to face him. "Yeah," Sam said, and that was the end of the conversation. Dean wasn't going to ask how or why, because the fact that things were back the way they were was all he needed to know. Sam didn't push it because it was best that Dean not catch on to the fact that Sam found himself _disappointed._

"Do we need an engineer or a geology guy?" Dean said. "Who's more likely to talk to us?"

Sam shrugged. "What're you asking me for?"

"You're the one who spent four years around those people," Dean said.

"They're just like anyone else," Sam said. "Don't be weird, Dean. Look for a geology professor. They'll have a department of Geology Sciences over here at Central."

Central Washington University. Dean took the laptop away and settled on the bed with it. After a few minutes he said, "The faculty has their email addresses and extensions published...there's like a dozen associate or assistant professors. May as well snag one of them." He leaned across the bed and grabbed his phone off the nightstand.

"Hey," Sam said, "Wait a second. What exactly are you gonna say?"

"Watch and learn, junior," Dean said, eyes darting between the laptop and his phone as he made sure he was dialing correctly.

Sam stretched his arms above his head and listened to his spine pop. It was sometimes unreasonably fun to see what Dean was going to do or say; he didn't mind not knowing in cases like this, even if he complained about it. He listened to Dean clear his throat a little and then give someone named Professor Gaines his real name.

"I'm a geology major from the U of W," Dean said, purposely pronouncing it _you of dub_ as if he were local. "I just need to ask a couple of questions. I'm doing my final thesis on the effects of continuous vibration on metasedimentary substructures like those found on Manastash Ridge."

Sam felt a snort coming and did his best to stay quiet. Dean knew it was there anyway, and threw one of the shoes by the bed in Sam's direction.

"Well," Dean said. "I guess I'm more interested in detecting the vibration itself. How much do you know about infrasonics?" Pause. "Seismic in origin, most likely, sure."

The rest of the conversation from Sam's angle was Dean typing notes into Word and making _mmm hmm_ noises, brow furrowed with concentration except for the point halfway through where one brow shot up and Dean froze, eyes wide and dim and lifting suddenly just to the right of Sam's head. Sam waited, reminded for a moment of the adage about cats and dogs seeing things that humans couldn't everytime they stared into space. Dean wasn't given to _eureka_ moments, so Sam was careful to watch and absorb it.

"And what type of meter would be best for picking something like that up?" Dean said, eyes shifting away to the floor and back into focus. He tucked his phone into the crook of his neck and typed, brow-furrow back in place. Sam stayed where he was and made hand-shapes, _here's the church, here's the steeple,_ and made sure Dean was looking at him when he _opened the doors to see all the people. _Dean gave him a wide-eyed, _what the hell is wrong with you_ look before turning his attention back to the laptop.

"Any possibility something like that at the right level could actually shift rock, or open something at the surface?" There was a beat, then he chuckled, the one laugh Sam hated, the false polite one. "No, of course not. Just wanted to tell a couple of my frat brothers how off base they were. They want it to come from a professor they don't have to face."

Sam sighed.

Dean listened a moment more, threw in a few pleasantries, then thanked the professor and clicked the phone shut. He held it out, chin in his other hand, hanging off the moment.

"So what've we got?" Sam said.

"Well," Dean said, "We need a sound meter that can pick up Hertz below the audible level. Or something that can be calibrated down to do that." He pecked away for a minute, and Sam slumped in the chair until his legs were stretched out straight in front of him. "Mmm, 'parallal real-time octave filters bank'...whatever. Sixteen Hertz to twenty kiloHertz...hope it comes with directions, I don't know jack about this."

"Are you gonna tell me what that was all about?" Sam said.

"The good professor tells me seismic waves and pretty much any kind of wave can _pool_," Dean said. "Spots where peaks and troughs of sound overlap. It can disappear in spots where peak and trough cancel each other out."

"Kind of like me and you," Sam said absently, still slumped in the chair.

Without looking up, Dean said, "What the fuck is with you, Sam?"

"No idea," Sam said. "Seriously, just...never mind. Look, if we get the meter and prove that that's what we're up against - infrasound, I mean - what the hell do we do to make it stop? Everything vibrates with its own tone, I remember that from physics 101. Stars...ring like bells, each with their own frequency. DNA base pairs have a frequency. The ocean -"

"The rivers, the rocks, the Earth's core," Dean interrupted. "Fine. Where's this going?"

Sam pointed a finger at his own head, his expression yelling _hello!_. "When contrasting frequencies collide, you end up with the waves slamming into each other. That can...I don't know what it can do. That's the point. Maybe we've run into something cool enough to warn everybody about. Write a paper on."

Dean laughed. "Man, we stumble into shit weekly that would pop the eyes of the white-picket-fence set," he said. "This one can't just be shot or burned, that's all. If we're gonna start writing papers, then start with how we can prove telekenisis and ESP exist, that we can prove that people survive physical death, and that kids have every reason to freak out about what's under the bed." He laughed again. "Do we get a _ghost writer_?"

"That was lame, even for you," Sam said, unperturbed by the jeering. "What if it's not just sound waves?" He meant to say it could still be something supernatural, but it wasn't important enough to start an argument over. Easier to stick with Dean's a-to-b pattern for now.

"One thing at a time," Dean said. "We figure out for sure what it is, and with that we figure out how to drain this frickin' _pool._" He completed another series of keystrokes, then said, "There. We can get one of these meters overnighted to the office of this place. I'll just ask 'em to keep an eye out for it."

"I'll do it," Sam said, rising. "You want anything else?"

Without even admitting it to himself Sam was testing to see if Dean really was closed up again. Because a question like that would get something if he wasn't, or so Sam's experience had taught him.

Dean eyed him, letting Sam's helpfulness raise his suspicions. "Don't be doing any solo work."

Sam shook his head. "God knows I can barely dress myself without your help, Dean, why the hell would I do anything else without you?"

Dean waved him off and reached for another shoe, hoping to nail Sam with it, but Sam was already out the door.

-I-

Sam realized he was being odd, could feel himself being annoyed and annoying. He knew himself well enough to admit he was feeling as if he wasn't solid unless Dean was engaged with him somehow, and he hated the idea enough to veer away from it. He felt childish and stupid for it and put it down to a reaction to having been too close to too many things recently. The sudden withdrawal was unsettling and felt like...greed.

Dean had told him _It wanted you so bad, it would have done anything to get you, so I thought if I couldn't kill it myself I could slow it down for awhile by giving myself -_

Sam understood that better all the time.

-I-


	9. Chapter 9

Thanks to everyone who managed to hang in there, up to this point - it's a wrap.

* * *

**If Belief Was Enough - final**  
(c)2006 b stearns  
Sometimes things work just because you think they work. It's as good a definition of faith as any.  
--Stephen King 

a/n: Props to Maygra for some wicked insight. Like, forever. Most of the science is based in fact, but my use of it (and the use of the meters) is poetic-license _foo-foo._

-I-

Dean was up early and waiting outside the office, acting like a kid at Christmas for that package to come. Sam found him out there by the gate to the less-than-adequately-chlorinated pool, drinking coffee and making eyebrow quirks at whoever went by. Yesterday's rain was just an occasional random puddle in divots of the parking lot's uneven blacktop, and the morning sun made Sam squint. He stood and stared at Dean for a moment, feeling amused and oddly settled.

"I got two," Dean said, nodding at the clerk behind the counter. Through the plate glass window, she was giving him a look that was a cross between suspicion and appraisal that a lot of women gave him. _I know just by looking that you're a pain in the ass, but I'd do you right here in public all the same._

"I'm almost afraid to ask," Sam said.

"Two meters," Dean said. "One for the original campsite, you know, the spot the Northrups said it last opened, and then...where we were. We can't just try and get readings from one spot."

"Oh, because that'd be _unscientific_," Sam said. He was watching Dean's eyes dart around after mentioning going back up there, like he was looking for something to focus on. "We're gonna be able to read this stuff, right? Or figure it out."

Dean smirked at him over the rim of his coffee. "Since when do you follow me around and talk just to be saying something?"

"I just feel lost if you're not flipping me shit," Sam said in a monotone, looking out toward the road. All grays, the asphalt and dust and even the washed out blue of the sky. "I had to come out here to get some. Don't make them kick you out of here for loitering, huh?" He walked away, intent on coffee and on not standing around trying to figure out if Dean was okay. And, if he was honest...intent on not hoping for a glimmer of anything he could recognize as stitches loosening.

He was blind now, after having seen something so damn pure. All the rough and vibrant but easily blended colors that had spoken in ways he could decipher forever, now closed off again and leaving him back in the dull halflight of what passed for the visible world.

Sam had asked the revenant what it'd wanted from him, and its only answer was _it's been so dark_

and _lighthouses are so hard to ignore. _All it had wanted was light and sound, never realizing that getting what it wanted would take it apart. It had seen something in Sam that it gravitated to, but it had gone for Dean instead. He and Dean had been laughing and Dean had accidentally been _Dean_ for a moment, open to the sky, and it had seen beneath and gone for the true lighthouse of the two. Maybe Sam had seemed like the prize after Dean managed to get himself locked down for awhile, or just easier to see from the shadows because he was open in ways he didn't even want to be.

Sam hated feeling like a moth circling a cold candle and waiting, waiting, hoping for a flame. It was awful to finally understand what had driven the thing. To feel pity for it seemed like such treason.

-I-

Sam drove because Dean was still messing with specs and dials. The meters looked like older police scanners to some extent, boxy, with LED screens, and they needed industrial-grade alkaline batteries the size of coffee mugs. Sam had taken the paperwork as soon as the box had been opened, and he'd declared with outrage that it was all in German and all he could make out was 'not to be used for the other use'. Dean had believed him for an instant and yanked the papers away only to roll them up and hit Sam with them once he realized it was a joke.

Dean shoved everything into his pack once they approached the muddy turnoff for the trail, leaning forward as if he couldn't wait to get out of the car and get it done. Still, they both sat there for a moment as the Impala's engine rumbled to silence. They'd have to walk up a bit to get back to where they'd parked the car that night the hole had decided to force Sam's hand. Even in daylight, Sam had no intention of parking right where the thing had last opened.

Sam finally got out and stretched, then got into the trunk for the shovel he was now aware of since they'd done 'inventory'. They'd agreed that wrapping the meters in plastic and burying them a couple feet down would lower the chances of regular atmospheric interference and maybe give them a better reading. The first would go right where they'd parked a couple of nights earlier, then they'd hike up to the campsite above Tripod Flats.

Dean had shouldered his pack and was looking around with his brows drawn together, checking the trees and sky almost as if he was daring anything to bother them. Then he set off ahead of Sam, long strides biting into the terrain.

Even had they not remembered the spot, they would have felt it. Maybe it was years of practice in picking up disturbances of all kinds, but there was no doubt that something had Happened There even if there was no visible sign. The EMF meter was in the pack with everything else, and it was on, but it was silent. Sam hadn't expected much else. He had hoped for some kind of depression in the soil, though, because how the hell anything like what he'd seen from the open passenger door could just vanish was ludicrous. If he hadn't known better, he would have questioned his own sanity, and couldn't blame anyone else who might do the same over it.

"Ready to plant this?" Sam said, holding up the shovel. Dean made some noncommittal sound, so Sam turned to look at him.

Dean had paused, leaning forward a little as if trying to take that next step, staring at the ground. Sam watched him pretend he wasn't rattled. The set of his shoulders, his jaw, the locked knees, the white knuckles. Separately they each meant something commonplace to Dean and how he dealt with things, how he handled the little annoyances he didn't waste more than one reaction on. He worked through his fears the same way he worked through pain, one thing at a time, talking himself out of whatever it was by running through and yelling. When Sam had been afraid to pass through dark rooms as a kid - one of the places they'd stayed in hadn't had wall switches - Dean had taught him to scare the darkness back by running through and yelling. It had worked, had made him feel braver or at least made him laugh, and later when they ran through countless dark rooms in silence with weapons more fearsome than their voices, Sam had carried the _idea_ with him.

A Dean who didn't even try and crash his way through something out of stubbornness alone was one that was finally admitting to being afraid enough to let it stop him.

Sam waited, keeping quiet and still, knowing that even an accidental motion would be translated into some sort of judgment and would allow Dean to focus on him with a rebound of misdirected emotion. The whistle of wind through the tops of the conifers surrounding them seemed to fill the world. Windy, almost always windy there, and Sam thought about higher suicide rates near mountain ranges and how what you didn't know could hurt you.

He realized Dean wasn't going to dig his way out, and it occurred to him that the longer it went on, the harder things were going to be. Giving his brother enough room wasn't going to do it this time. Watching for a reaction, he came gradually closer until he was standing right up against Dean's back. He leaned in, resting his chin on Dean's shoulder and leaning his head against Dean's. Dean permitted it, continuing to look at the ground.

Sam didn't say anything, because all he could think of was _you don't have to do this_ or _it's okay_, because they were bullshit platitudes and Dean would know that as well as Sam did. He would just stand there and do or be whatever was needed this time and wonder for a fleeting moment whether nature or fate knew what they were doing and he was only born for this, to be counterpoint and cornerstone for his spire of a brother.

After nearly a full minute, Dean said, "Let's get this bitch done," and stepped away.

-I-

The hike up to Tripod Flats was even quieter than it had been the first time. Once the meter was buried, though, Dean had demanded that Sam race him back down because they were 'out of shape after all this lying around'. Dean, true to form, was wearing the wrong type of footwear and fell twice, but he still managed to beat Sam because he was a better jumper when it came to roots and stumps. Also, part of it might have been that Sam was laughing, which kept him from getting enough air.

-I-

Dean spread the specs out on the table in the little room in Cle Elum and declared they would wait a day to let the meters record a full twenty four hours of data.

"And if they don't catch anything?" Sam said.

"We stay here until they do," Dean said. "You don't really think this is anything else?"

Sam shrugged. "What do you want to do for a day?"

"Sam. After all this, you think maybe this is something else?"

"I don't know," Sam said, sounding more annoyed than he'd intended.

Dean stared at him for a few seconds, then said, "Let's see what kind of action this place has. I wanna kick somebody's ass at darts while we're waiting."

-I-

They bothered to try eating decent food for once, a little spot called the _Cottage Cafe_. Genuine mashed potatoes, not flakes, and chicken fried steak that was actually cooked to order. The coffee was even decent.

"You wanna tell me if you have any other theories?" Dean said. "You keep trying to get at something, and it's not like you to keep from running off at the mouth about every little thing you think."

"If I was thinking something, I sure as hell wouldn't say anything now," Sam said. "You'd make a great psychologist."

"I really put people at ease," Dean said. "It's a gift. I could specialize in, you know, masculinity issues."

Before that could go too far, Sam said, "It goes back to what the professor told you. If the peaks and troughs of the infrasound are overlapping, and that's what's actually causing this, then keeping them from overlapping would probably make it stop. What would we need to disrupt the frequencies so they can't overlap?"

"A contrasting frequency," Dean said immediately.

They looked at each other for a moment.

"And once we get the meters, we'll know what that is," Dean said. "Somehow. Or the nice professor will maybe have an idea. If we could broadcast something just where people usually wander, in a tone or whatever that keeps infrasound from pooling..."

"Using what, though?" Sam said. "Something that would emit one note or tone or whatever, and then we'd have to find a way to keep anybody from running into it...and how long would it go, before needing its batteries changed?"

"So we come back every now and then and change the batteries," Dean said.

Sam stared across the table at him. "You're serious. Come back here every few months or whatever and change batteries."

Dean grabbed the bill. "Enough thinking," he said. "No more multi-syllable words, either. Darts. Beer. Go. Now." He valuted out of the booth, leaving Sam to figure a tip and shake his head. It all made more sense than he thought it should, and he couldn't figure out why nothing seemed to sit right with him lately.

-I-

Sam awoke to a mild hangover and a memory of an entire evening that had involved hanging out and not trying to get anywhere for once. There'd been muttering by the other patrons about the nonstop Black Sabbath on the jukebox, but Dean either hadn't heard or couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it. They weren't hunters or hustlers or anything more than a couple of guys just passing time. Sam felt his head clear for the first time in a while and realized again that Dean was wiser in some of the things he did than Sam gave him credit for.

-I-

When they dug the meters up, the memory functions said something much the same. Sixteen continuous Hertz on the Tripod Flats meter and 14.6 on the lower one, except where it briefly registered 18.98 for twenty minutes around two a.m. The frequency at which the human eye, and to some extent the temporal lobe, resonated.

"_Constant_ infrasound," Dean said. "And when the two frequencies widen out and manage to hit each other occasionally, or overlap..."

"Like when you throw a rock into a lake," Sam said, doing some overlapping of his own. "The rings spread out and overlap, and if they're toned just right, it rattles the space between the rocks and every damn fragment of dirt until it just opens up..."

"It's the river," Dean said, sitting down on the ground with one of the meters in his lap. "You were right. The continuous tone must be the Columbia, and if the seismic patterns change, or the wind comes through the right way...shit."

"One single note playing forever up here won't disrupt it, then," Sam said. "It's like the shields the Borg had. It would have to constantly change frequency."

"We just have to figure out how to set our phasers to 'suck on this'," Dean said.

"What if setting something up here that plays out in one or more frequencies of infrasound just opens more holes?" Sam said.

Dean stood, brushing himself off absently. "It's too late for the Prime Directive now, Sulu," he said. "We might have to adjust it every so often. We're gonna be back to check anyway. Better to do something than to just hope it gets better by itself."

Sam didn't mean to; he'd meant to eventually, but maybe when Dean wasn't paying attention and then could suddenly walk away. Out there, there was nowhere to go, which seemed ridiculous when there was nothing but space. He had to, he couldn't miss an opportunity to set this one thing right, even though he realized his idea of resolution was probably different from Dean's in this case. It didn't matter.

"Dean," he said.

Dean raised his head, eyebrows quirked.

Sam shook his head a little, beginning to grin but a little afraid to, amazed he was going to say something he'd just get shot down for but knowing it was important that he say it. "If we weren't brothers?" He looked straight at Dean, finally, eyes narrowed a little and unblinking. "I would still want to know you. We would still be friends."

Dean just stared at him for a moment, brows lowered again. Sam knew his chance to get unfettered honestly out of his brother without a fight or by accident was gone, but it didn't disappoint him right then. He still knew enough to get by with. There would be some smartass comment, and they'd go on, and the normalcy would be a relief tinged with chagrin.

Dean lowered his eyes altogether. To anyone else he would have looked bored or indifferent; to Sam it was discomfort. He'd seen Dean do it every time he wasn't sure what to do with something that had been handed to him. Words, objects, weird food. Their father and time had taught them that open confusion was a red flag for someone to step in and take advantage of them, and so they had learned to pass almost everything off.

"I would still think of us as brothers," Sam said.

Dean made a brief gesture with his hands, opening them palms-up, hesitating, and closing them again, tilting his head to the side. Sam didn't need him to say anything aloud. This time Dean was plain without verbal accompaniment; he would have been readable before any of it had happened, eyes and hands always wide and expressive. He finally rested his hands on his hips, looking so thoroughly trapped according to Sam's basic lexicon of All Things Dean that Sam walked away to break the standoff and take the unintended pressure with him.

Dean had not followed protocol by snapping at him or rolling his eyes, and Sam was suddenly at a loss. Sam had watched Dean all their lives and had taken his cues from him until faced with people and situations that begged him to adapt to _their_ structure for four years. Now he was caught between and out of step and could only offer simple phrases that maybe didn't get through, or were too much to handle all at once. Asking for a response was asking for a breach in the structure Sam had purposely wrapped tight again, and it felt selfish, and ...

"Sam," Dean said.

"I'm a girl," Sam said, still walking. "I know, good, thanks."

"_Sam goddamnit_!"

Sam paused at the..._command_, even though, he registered with surprise, he had an absurd urge to run. He tilted his head, keeping his back turned, playing his own brand of annoyance as his last defense.

"You don't - " Dean began, then threw his hands into the air unseen, face a riot of emotion for just an instant, shell open but unbroken. By the time Sam turned to face him, they were wearing matching poker faces again, posed in weary apathy tinged with irritation. Dean took several steps toward him that looked as if they would end with them both in the nearby ravine and covered in mud, but he stopped within arm's length and gestured again, keeping his eyes down, waving his hands a little and then gripping the front of Sam's jacket. It was just a rough and sudden straightening of his clothes, really. Sam kept his hands in his pockets and his face straight, taking it in stride.

Dean thumped Sam's chest with an open palm, face still shuttered, and walked away.

Sam broke into a grin.

-I-

After messing around online and making another call to the university, the idea of creating an opposing tone or series of tones of infrasound to keep the existing infrasound under control not only seemed like one of their brainstorming oddities but something _plausible._ Not only that, but the meters themselves could be set to continously take readings and give off tones low enough at enough sub-audible volume to create an area effect. They could burying meters at regular intervals on the busier trails and leave them like inverse land mines.

Dean didn't bother adding anything to the journal this time.

"You don't get it," Sam said. "We solved this thing. We still did it the hard way, like we always do, but we _solved it._ There were no spirits, we didn't have to shoot or burn anything. We figured it out without needing...well, _traditional_ weapons, or Latin. It was just everyday science, and we got it."

Dean didn't look mollified.

"Dean," Sam said, in a way that implied _c'mon, you have to admit something._

"Big deal," Dean said.

"It means we can do anything," Sam said. "The two of us. We can do anything."

Dean glanced at him grudgingly. Just a moment of connection, enough to leave things open but convey how little he liked it. "The anything part, I'll buy. The everyday science thing? No way, Sam. There was nothing everyday in any of that."

Sam exhaled a laugh, looking away with a half-formed grin that said _you always do this_. "Okay," he said. "I'm not sure we even know what everyday means anymore."

"The most we've done is keep a few hikers from spontaneous burial," Dean said. "Good for us. Nothing evil, here."

"We're not racking up points, Dean," Sam said. "Shouldn't we tell them? The Northrups. The thing that messed up their family - they could understand it and realize that nothing was out to get them. The brother that's left could quit running."

"I don't think it'll make much difference, Sam," Dean said. "People believe what they want to, no matter what anyone else says."

Sam sighed, and without looking at him, Dean said, "Once people see stuff - silverware flying across the room, blood running out of the showerhead, no problem. They get it. But you and me, spouting science? Nah."

"With evidence, Dean," Sam said, pointing at the paperwork left from the meters.

"You try telling that guy that what he heard wasn't real," Dean said, continuing to roll his clothes. "You try telling him it was soundwaves fucking with his temporal lobe and working itself into recognizeable patterns just based on what he thought he should hear. He's never gonna get rid of the doubt in the back of his head, no matter what you show him. Belief trumps evidence, Sam. No matter what we tell ourselves."

Sam kept watching him, hearing _no matter what I tell myself._ It was nothing but his own understanding, though. Dean wasn't throwing anything off.

_I have to get to Sam, Sam needs me._

Nothing had really changed.

Later, while Sam was in the shower, Dean quietly got the dreamcatcher out of the trunk and hung it between the beds. It didn't matter if the goddamn thing worked. The idea was enough. Belief was enough.

The next afternoon they were gone, headed east, following a tip.

-I-

_Ellensburg, WA_

Dean and Sam were long gone from the first motel in Ellensburg, days gone, headed to Cle Elum and then out of the area altogether, but something stirred along the doorways.

It might have been dust in the last of the light, looking for a place to settle, if it hadn't been so carefully following along any surface Dean had touched during his time there.

It, too, finally moved on. Headed east.

-I- -I- -I-


End file.
